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Human Intercourse. 



BY 



i 



PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON, 

AUTHOR OF "THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE," "A PAINTER'S CAMP," "THOUGHTS 

ABOUT ART," "CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS," "ROUND MY HOUSE," "THE 

SYLVAN YEAR " AND - THE UNKNOWN RIVER," " WENDERHOLME," 

"MODERN FRENCHMEN," "LIFE OF J. M. W. TURNER," 

•'THE GRAPHIC ARTS," "ETCHING AND ETCHERS," 

•'PARIS IN OLD AND PRESENT TIMES," 

"HARRY BLOUNT." 



"I love tranquil solitude, 
And such society 
As is quiet, wise, and 



g aod. 

Shell: 



LIBRARY 
13 _ 1891 



OTOfMIMBJ 



BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1890. 






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author's edition. 

ly Transfer 
JUN 5 \M 



ISnt&crsftj) -press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



Co tfje JHemorjj of lEmerson. 



If I dedicate this book on Human Intercourse to the 
memory of one whose voice I never heard, and to 
whom I never addressed a letter, the seeming inappro- 
pr lateness will disappear when the reader knows what 
a great and persistent influence he had on the whole 
course of my thinking, and therefore on all my work. 
He was told of this before his death, and the acknowl- 
edgment gave him pleasure. Perhaps this public 
repetition of it may not be without utility at a time 
when, although it is clear to us that lie has left an 
immortal name, the exact nature of the rank he will 
occupy amongst great men does not seem to be evident 
as yet. The embarrassment of premature criticism is 
a testimony to his originality. But although it may 
be too soon for us to know what his name will mean 
to posterity, we may tell posterity what service he 
rendered to ourselves. To me he taught two great 
lessons. The first was to rely confidently on that 
order of the universe which makes it always really 
worth while to do our best, even though the reward 
may not be visible ; and the second was to have self- 
reliance enough to trust our own convictions and our 



vi DEDICATION. 

own gifts, such as they are, or such as they may be- 
come, without either echoing the opinions or desiring 
the more brilliant gifts of others. Emerson taught 
much besides ; but it is these two doctrines of reliance 
on the compensations of Nature, and of a self respect- 
ful reliance on our own individuality, that have the 
most invigorating influence on workers like myself. 
Emerson knew that each of us can only receive that 
for which he has an affinity, and can only give forth 
effectually what is by birthright, or has become, his 
own. To have accepted this doctrine with perfect 
contentment is to possess one's soul in peace. 

Emerson combined high intellect with pure honesty, 
and remained faithful to the double law of the intel- 
lectual life — high thinking and fearless utterance — ■ 
to the end of his days, with a beautiful persistence 
and serenity. So now I go, in spirit, a pilgrim to 
that tall pine-tree that grows upon " the hill-top to the 
east of Sleepy Hollow" and lay one more wreath upon 
an honored grave. 

June 24, I884. 



PREFACE. 



WHEN this book was begun, some years ago, I 
made a formal plan, according to which it was 
to have been one long Essay or Treatise, divided into 
sections and chapters, and presenting that apparently 
perfect ordonnance which gives such an imposing air to 
a work of art. I say " apparently perfect ordonnance" 
because in such cases the perfection of the arrangement 
is often only apparent, and the work is like those formal 
pseudo-classical buildings that seem, with their regular 
columns, spaces, and windows, the very highest ex- 
amples of method ; but you find on entering that the 
internal distribution of space is defective and incon- 
venient, that one room has a window in a corner and 
another half a window, that one is needlessly large for 
its emplojnnent and another far too small. In litera- 
ture the ostentation of order may compel an author to 
extreme condensation in one part of his book and to 
excessive amplification in another, since, in reality, the 
parts of his subject do not Ml more naturally into equal 
divisions than words beginning with different letters in 
the dictionar} 7 . I therefore soon abandoned external 
rigidity of order, and made my divisions more elastic ; 
but I went still further after some experiments, and 
abandoned the idea of a Treatise. This was not done 
without some regret, as I know that a Treatise has a 



vm PREFACE. 

better chance of permanence than a collection of Essaj^s ; 
but, in this case, I met with an invisible obstacle that 
threatened to prevent good literary execution. After 
making some progress I felt that the work was not very 
readable, and that the writing of it was not a satisfac- 
tory occupation. Whenever this happens there is sure 
to be an error of method somewhere. What the error 
was in this case I did not discover for a long time, but 
at last I suddenly perceived it. A formal Treatise, to 
be satisfactory, can only be written about ascertained 
or ascertainable laws ; and human intercourse as it is 
carried on between individuals, though it looks so acces- 
sible to every observer, is in reality a subject of infinite 
mystery and obscurity, about which hardly anything is 
known, about which certainly nothing is known abso- 
lutely and completely. I found that every attempt to 
ascertain and proclaim a law only ended, when the sup- 
posed law was brought face to face with nature, hy 
discovering so many exceptions that the best practical 
rules were suspension of judgment and a reliance upon 
nothing but special observation in each particular case. 
I found that in real human intercourse the theoretically 
improbable, or even the theoretically impossible, was 
constantly happening. I remember a case in real life 
which illustrates this very forcibly. A certain English 
lady, influenced by the received ideas about human in- 
tercourse which define the conditions of it in a hard and 
sharp manner, was strongly convinced that it would be 
impossible for her to have friendly relations with another 
lad}' whom she had never seen, but was likely to see 
frequently. All her reasons would be considered excel- 
lent reasons b}' those who believe in maxims and rules. 
It was plain that there could be nothing in common. 
The other lady was neither of the same country, nor 



PREFACE. IX 

of the same religious and political parties, nor exactly 
of the same class, nor of the same generation. These 
facts were known, and the inference deduced from them 
was that intercourse would be impossible. After some 
time the English lady began to perceive that the case 
did not bear out the supposed rules ; she discovered that 
the younger lady might be an acceptable friend. At 
last the full strange truth became apparent, — that she 
was singularly well adapted, better adapted than any 
other human being, to take a filial relation to the elder, 
especially in times of sickness, when her presence was 
a wonderful support. Then the warmest affection 
sprang up between the two, lasting till separation by 
death and still cherished by the survivor. What be- 
comes of rules and maxims and wise old saws in the 
face of nature and reality ? What can we do better than 
to observe nature with an open, unprejudiced mind, and 
gather some of the results of observation ? 

I am conscious of several omissions that may possibly 
be rectified in another volume if this is favorably ac- 
cepted. The most important of these are the influence 
of age on intercourse, and the effects of living in the 
same house, which are not invariably favorable. Both 
these subjects are very important, and I have not time 
to treat them now with the care they would require. 
There ought also to have been a careful stud}' of the 
natural antagonisms, which are of terrible importance 
when people, naturally antagonistic, are compelled by 
circumstances to live together. These are, however, 
generally of less importance than the affinities, because 
we contrive to make our intercourse with antagonistic 
people as short and rare as possible, and that with sym- 
pathetic people as frequent and long as circumstances 
will permit. 



x PREFA CE. 

I will not close this preface without sajdng that the 
happiness of sympathetic human intercourse seems to 
me incomparably greater than any other pleasure. I 
may be supposed to have passed the age of enthusiastic 
illusions, yet I would at any time rather pass a week 
with a real friend in any place that afforded simple 
shelter than with an indifferent person in a palace. In 
saying this I am thinking of real experiences. One of 
my friends who is devoted to archaeological excavations 
has often invited me to share his life in a hut or a cot- 
tage, and I have invariably found that the pleasure of 
his society far overbalanced the absence of luxury. On 
the other hand, I have sometimes endured extreme ennui 
at sumptuous feasts in richly appointed houses. The 
result of experience, in my case, has been to confirm a 
youthful conviction that the value of certain persons is 
not to be estimated by comparison with anything else. 
I was always a believer, and am so at this day more 
than ever, in the happiness of genuine human inter- 
course, but I prefer solitude to the false imitation of it. 
It is in this as in other pleasures, the better we appre- 
ciate the real thing, the less we are disposed to accept 
the spurious copy as a substitute. By far the greater 
part of what passes for human intercourse is not inter- 
course at all, but only acting, of which the highest 
object and most considerable merit is to conceal the 
weariness that accompanies its hollow observances. 

One sad aspect of my subject has not been touched 
upon in this volume. It was often present in my 
thoughts, but I timidly shrank from dealing with it. 
I might have attempted to show in what manner inter- 
course is cut short by death. All reciprocity of inter- 
course is, or appears to be, entirely cut short by that 
catastrophe ; but those who have talked with us much 



PREFACE. xi 

in former years retain an influence that may be even 
more constant than our recollection of them. My own 
recollection of the dead is extremely vivid and clear, 
and I cultivate it by willingly thinking about them, 
being especially happy when by some accidental flash 
of brighter memory a more than usual degree of lucidity 
is obtained. I accept with resignation the natural law, 
on the whole so beneficent, that when an organism is 
no longer able to exist without suffering, or senile de- 
crepitude, it should be dissolved and made insensible 
of suffering ; but I by no means accept the idea that 
the dead are to be forgotten in order that we may spare 
ourselves distress. Let us give them their due place, 
their great place, in our hearts and in our thoughts ; 
and if the sweet reciprocity of human intercourse is no 
longer possible with those who are silent and asleep, let 
the memorj 7 of past intercourse be still a part of our 
lives. There are hours when we live with the dead 
more than with the living, so that without any trace of 
superstition we feel their old sweet influence acting 
upon us yet, and it seems as if only a little more were 
needed to give us "the touch of a vanished hand, and 
the sound of a voice that is still." 

Closely connected with this subject of death is the 
subject of religious beliefs. In the present state of 
confusion and change, some causes of which are indi- 
cated in this volume, the only plain course for honorable 
men is to act always in favor of truthfulness, and there- 
fore against hypocrisy, and against those encouragers of 
hypocrisy who offer social advantages as rewards for it. 
What may come in the future we cannot tell, but we 
may be sure that the best way to prepare for the future 
is to be honest and candid in the present. There are 
two causes which are gradually effecting a great change, 



Xll PREFACE. 

and as they are natural causes they are irresistibly pow- 
erful. One is the process of anatytic detachment, by 
which sentiments and feelings once believed to be re- 
ligious are now found to be separable from religion. If 
a French peasant has a feeling for architecture, poetry, 
or music, or an appreciation of eloquence, or a desire 
to hear a kind of moral philosophy, he goes to the vil- 
lage church to satisfy these dim incipient desires. In 
his case these feelings and wants are all confusedly con- 
nected with religion ; in ours they are detached from it, 
and only reconnected with it by accident, we being still 
aware that there is no essential identity. That is the 
first dissolving cause. It seems only to affect the ex- 
ternals of religion, but it goes deeper by making the 
consciously religious state of mind less habitual. The 
second cause is even more serious in its effects. We 
are acquiring the habit of explaining everything by 
natural causes, and of tr}dng to remedy everything by 
the employment of natural means. Journals dependent 
on popular approval for the enormous circulation that 
is necessary to their existence do not hesitate, in clear 
terms, to express their preference of natural means to 
the invocation of supernatural agencies. For example, 
the correspondent of the "Daily News" at Port Said, 
after describing the annual blessing of the Suez Canal at 
the Epiphany, observes : "Thus the canal was solemnly 
blessed. The opinion of the captains of the ships that 
throng the harbor, waiting until the block adjusts itself, 
is that it would be better to widen it." Such an opinion 
is perfectly modern, perfectly characteristic of our age. 
We think that steam excavators and dredgers would be 
more likely to prevent blocks in the Suez Canal than 
a priest reading prayers out of a book and throwing a 
golden cross into tin* sea, to be fished up again by divers. 



PREFACE. xm 

We cannot help thinking as we do : our opinion has not 
been chosen by us voluntarily, it has been forced upon 
us by facts that we cannot help seeing, but it deprives 
us of an opportunity for a religious emotion, and it 
separates us, on that point, from all those who are still 
capable of feeling it. I have given considerable space 
to the consideration of these changes, but not a dis- 
proportionate space. They have a deplorable effect on 
human intercourse by dividing friends and families into 
different groups, and by separating those who might 
otherwise have enjoyed friendship unreservedly. It is 
probable, too, that we are only at the beginning of the 
conflict, and that in years not immeasurably distant 
there will be fierce struggles on the most irritating of 
practical issues. To name but one of these it is prob- 
able that there will be a sharp struggle when a strong 
and determined naturalist part} 7 shall claim the instruc- 
tion of the young, especially with regard to the origin 
of the race, the beginnings of animal life, and the evi- 
dences of intention in nature. Loving, as I do, the 
amenities of a peaceful and polished civilization much 
better than angry con trovers} 7 , I long for the time when 
these great questions will be considered as settled one 
way or the other, or else, if they are beyond our intel- 
ligence, for the time when they may be classed as in- 
soluble, so that men may work out their destiny without 
bitter quarrels about their origin. The present at least 
is ours, and it depends upon ourselves whether it is to 
be wasted in vain disputes or brightened hy charity and 
kindness. 



CONTENTS. 



Essay Page 
I. On the Difficulty of Discovering Fixed 

Laws 3 

II. Independence 12 

III. Of Passionate Love 33 

IV. Companionship in Marriage 44 

Y. Family Ties 63 

' VI. Fathers and Sons 78 

VII. The Rights of the Guest 99 

VIII. The Death of Friendship 110 

IX. The Flux of Wealth . . » 119 

X. Differences of Rank and Wealth .... 130 

XI. The Obstacle of Language 148 

XEI.« The Obstacle of Religion 161 

XIII. Priests and Women 175 

XIV. Why we are Apparently becoming Less 

Religious 205 

XV. How we are Really becoming Less Religious 215 

XVI. On an Unrecognized Form of Untruth . . 232 



xvi CONTENTS. 

Essay Page 

XVII. On a Remarkable English Peculiarity . . 239 

XVIII. Of Genteel Ignorance 253 

XIX. Patriotic Ignorance 264 

XX. Confusions ... 280 

XXI. The Noble Bohemianism 295 

XXII. Or Courtesy in Epistolary Communication 315 

XXIII. Letters of Friendship 336 

XXIV. Letters of Business 354 

XXV. Anonymous Letters 370 

XXVI. Amusements 383 

INDEX 403 



HUMAN INTERCOURSE. 



HUMAN INTEKCOUKSE. 



ESSAY I. 

ON THE DIFFICULTY OF DISCOVERING FIXED 
LAWS. 

A BOOK on Human Intercourse might be written 
-*^*~ in a variety of ways, and amongst them might 
be an attempt to treat the subject in a scientific manner 
so as to elucidate those natural laws by which inter- 
course between human beings must be regulated. If 
we knew quite perfectly what those laws are we should 
enjoy the great convenience of being able to predict 
with certainty which men and women would be able 
to associate with pleasure, and which would be con- 
strained or repressed in each other's society. Human 
intercourse would then be as much a positive science 
as chemistry, in which the effects of bringing substances 
together can be foretold with the utmost accuracy. 
Some very distant approach to this scientific state may 
in certain instances actually be made. When we know 
the characters of two people with a certain degree of 
precision we may sometimes predict that they are sure 
to quarrel, and have the satisfaction of witnessing the 
explosion that our own acumen has foretold. To detect 



4 ON THE DIFFICULTY OF 

in people we know those incompatibilities that are the 
fatal seeds of future dissension is one of our malicious 
pleasures. An acute observer really has considerable 
powers of prediction and calculation with reference to 
individual human beings, but there his wisdom ends. 
He cannot deduce from these separate cases any general 
rules or laws that can be firmly relied upon as every 
real law of nature can be relied upon, and therefore it 
may be concluded that such rules are not laws of 
nature at all, but only poor and untrustworthy substi- 
tutes for them. 

The reason for this difficulty I take to be the ex- 
treme complexity of human nature and its boundless 
variety, which make it always probable that in every 
mind which we have not long and closely studied there 
will be elements wholly unknown to us. How often, 
with regard to some public man, who is known to us 
only in part through his acts or his writings, are we 
surprised by the sudden revelation of characteristics 
that we never imagined for him and that seem almost 
incompatible with the better known side of his nature ! 
How much the more, then, are we likely to go wrong 
in our estimates of people we know nothing about, and 
how impossible it must be for us to determine how they 
are likely to select their friends and companions ! 

Certain popular ideas appear to represent a sort of 
rude philosophy of human intercourse. There is the 
common belief, for example, that, in order to associate 
pleasantly together, people should be of the same class 
and nearly in the same condition of fortune, but when 
we turn to real life we find very numerous instances in 



DISCOVERING FIXED LAWS. 5 

which this fancied law is broken with iae happiest 
results. The late Duke of Albany may be mentioned 
as an example. No doubt his own natural refinement 
would have prevented him from associating with vulgar 
people ; but he readily associated with refined and cul- 
tivated people who had no pretension to rank. His 
own rank was a power in his hands that he used for 
good, and he was conscious of it, but it did not isolate 
him ; he desired to know people as they are, and was 
capable of feeling the most sincere respect for anybody 
who deserved it. So it is, generally, with all who have 
the gifts of sympathy and intelligence. Merely to avoid 
what is disagreeable has nothing to do with pride of 
station. Vulgar society is disagreeable, which is a suffi- 
cient reason for keeping aloof from it. Amongst people 
of refinement, association or even friendship is possible 
in spite of differences of rank and fortune. 

Another popular belief is that " men associate to 
gether when they are interested in the same things." 
It would, however, be easy to adduce very numerous 
instances in which an interest in similar things has 
been a cause of quarrel, when if one of the two parties 
had regarded those things with indifference, harmonious 
intercourse might have been preserved. The livelier 
our interest in anything the more does acquiescence in 
matters of detail appear essential to us. Two people 
are both of them extremely religious, but one of them 
is a Mahometan, and the other a Christian ; here the in- 
terest in religion causes a divergence, enough in most 
cases to make intercourse impossible, when it would 
have been quite possible if both parties had regarded 



6 ON THE DIFFICULTY OF 

religion with indifference. Bring the two nearer to- 
gether, suppose them to be both Christians, they ac- 
knowledge one law, one doctrine, one Head of the 
church in heaven. Yes, but they do not acknowledge 
the same head of it on earth, for one accepts the 
Papal supremac}^, which the other denies ; and their 
common Christianity is a feeble bond of union in com- 
parison with the forces of repulsion contained in a 
multitude of details. Two nominal, indifferent Chris- 
tians who take no interest in theology would have a 
better chance of agreeing. Lastly, suppose them to 
be both members of the Church of England, one of the 
old school, with firm and settled beliefs on every point 
and a horror of the most distant approaches to heresy, 
the other of the new school, vague, indeterminate, desir- 
ing to preserve his Christianity as a sentiment when it 
has vanished as a faith, thinking that the Bible is not 
true in the old sense but only " contains" truth, that 
the divinity of Christ is " a past issue," 1 and that evo- 
lution is, on the whole, more probable than direct and 
intentional creation, — what possible agreement can 
exist between these two? If they both care about 
religious topics, and talk about them, will not their 
disagreement be in exact proportion to the liveliness 
of their interest in the subject? So in a realm with 
which I have some acquaintance, that of the fine arts, 
discord is always probable between those who have a 
passionate delight in art. Innocent, well-intentioned 
friends think that because two men "like painting," 
they ought to be introduced, as they are sure to amuse 

1 An expression used to me by a learned Doctor of Oxford. 



DISCOVERING FIXED LAWS. 7 

each other. In reality, their tastes may be more op- 
posed than the taste of either of them is to perfect 
indifference. One has a severe taste for beautiful form 
and an active contempt for picturesque accidents and 
romantic associations, the other feels chilled by severe 
beauty and delights in the picturesque and romantic. 
If each is convinced of the superiority of his own 
principles he will deduce from them an endless series 
of judgments that can onl} T irritate the other. 

Seeing that nations are always hostile to each other, 
always watchfully jealous and inclined to rejoice in 
every evil that happens to a neighbor, it would appear 
safe to predict that little intercourse could exist be- 
tween persons of different nationality. When, however, 
we observe the facts as they are in real life, we per- 
ceive that very strong and durable friendships often 
exist between men who are not of the same nation, and 
that the chief obstacle to the formation of these is not 
so much nationality as difference of language. There 
is, no doubt, a prejudice that one is not likely to get 
on well with a foreigner, and the prejudice has often 
the effect of keeping people of different nationality 
apart, but when once it is overcome it is often found 
that very powerful feelings of mutual respect and sym- 
pathy draw the strangers together. On the other hand, 
there is not the least assurance that the mere fact of 
being born in the same country will make two men 
regard each other with kindness. An Englishman 
repels another Englishman when he meets him on the 
Continent. 1 The only just conclusion is that nationality 

1 The causes of this curious repulsion are inquired into else- 
.where in this volume. 



8 ON THE DIFFICULTY OF 

affords no certain rule either in favor of intercourse 
or against it. A man may possibly be drawn towards 
a foreign nationalit} 7 b} T his appreciation of its excel- 
lence in some art that he loves, but this is the case only 
when the excellence is of the peculiar kind that supplies 
the needs of his own intelligence. The French excel 
in painting ; that is to say, that many Frenchmen have 
attained a certain kind of excellence in certain depart- 
ments of the art of painting. Englishmen and Ameri- 
cans who value that particular kind of excellence are 
often strongly drawn towards Paris as an artistic centre 
or capital ; and this opening of their minds to French 
influence in art may admit other French influences at 
the same time, so that the ultimate effect of a love of 
art may be a breaking down of the barrier of nation- 
ality. It seldom happens that Frenchmen are drawn 
towards England and America by their love of painting, 
but it frequently happens that they become in a meas- 
ure Anglicized or Americanized either by the serious 
study of nautical science, or by the love of } T achting 
as an amusement, in which they look to England and 
America both for the most advanced theories and the 
newest examples. 

The nearest approach ever made to a general rule 
may be the affirmation that likeness is the secret of 
companionship. This has a great look of probabilit} 7 , 
and may really be the reason for many associations, 
but after observing others we might come to the con- 
clusion that an opposite law would be at least equally 
applicable. We might say that a companion, to be 
interesting, ought to bring new elements, and not be a 



DISCOVERING FIXED LAWS. 9 

repetition of our own too familiar personality. We 
have enough of ourselves in ourselves ; we desire a 
companion who will relieve us from the bounds of our 
thoughts, as a neighbor opens his garden to us, and 
delivers us from our own hedges. But if the unlikeness 
is so great that mutual understanding is impossible, 
then it is too great. We fancy that we should like to 
know. this or that author, because we feel a certain 
S3'mpathy with him though he is very different from 
us, but there are other writers whom we do not desire 
to know because we are aware of a difference too ex- 
cessive for companionship. 

The only approximation to a general law that I would 
venture to affirm is that the strongest reason why men 
are drawn together is not identity of class, not identity 
of race, not a common interest in any particular art or 
science, but because there is something in their idiosyn- 
crasies that gives a charm to intercourse between the 
two. What it is I cannot tell, and I have never met 
with the wise man who was able to enlighten me. 

It is not respect for character, seeing that we often 
respect people heartily without being able to enjoy their 
society. It is a mysterious suitableness or adaptability, 
and how mysterious it is may be in some degree real- 
ized when we reflect that we cannot account for our 
own preferences. I try to explain to myself, for my 
own intellectual satisfaction, how and why it is that I 
take pleasure in the society of one very dear friend. 
He is a most able, honorable, and high-minded man, 
but others are all that, and they give me no pleasure. 
My friend and I have really not very much in common, 



10 ON THE DIFFICULTY OF 

far less than I have with some perfectly indifferent 
people. I only know that we are alwaj^s glad to be 
together, that each of us likes to listen to the other, and 
that we have talked for innumerable hours. Neither 
does my affection blind me to his faults. I see them as 
clearly as if I were his enemy, and doubt not that he 
sees mine. There is no illusion, and there has been no 
change in our sentiments for twenty years. 

As a contrast to this instance I think of others in 
which everything seems to have been prepared on 
purpose for facility of intercourse, in which there is simi- 
larity of pursuits, of language, of education, of every- 
thing that is likely to permit men to talk easily together, 
and yet there is some obstacle that makes any real in- 
tercourse impossible. What the obstacle is I am unable 
to explain even to myself. It need not be any unkind 
feeling, nor any feeling of disapprobation ; there may 
be good-will on both sides and a mutual desire for a 
greater degree of intimacy, yet with all this the intimacy 
does not come, and such intercourse as we have is that 
of simple politeness. In these cases each party is apt 
to think that the other is reserved, when there is no 
wish to be reserved but rather a desire to be as open as 
the unseen obstacle will allow. The existence of the 
obstacle does not prevent respect and esteem or even 
a considerable degree of affection. It divides people 
who seem to be on the most friendly terms ; it divides 
even the nearest relations, brother from brother, and 
the son from the father. Nobody knows exactly what 
it is, but we have a word for it, — we call it incompati- 
bility. The difficulty of going farther and explaining 



DISCOVERING FIXED LAWS. 11 

the real nature of incompatibility is that it takes as 
many shapes as there are varieties in the characters 
of mankind. 

Sympathy and incompatibility, — these are the two 
great powers that decide for us whether intercourse is 
to be possible or not, but the causes of them are dark 
mysteries that lie undiscovered far down in the " abys» 
mal deeps of personality." 



12 INDEPENDENCE. 



ESSAY II. 

INDEPENDENCE. 

r I ^HERE is an illusory and unattainable indepen- 
-*■ dence which is a mere dream, but there is also a 
reasonable and attainable independence not really in- 
consistent with our obligations to humanity and our 
country. 

The dependence of the individual upon the race has 
never been so fully recognized as now, so that there 
is little fear of its being overlooked. The danger of 
our age, and of the future, is rather that a reasonable 
and possible independence should be made needlessly 
difficult to attain and to preserve. 

The distinction between the two may be conveniently 
illustrated by a reference to literary production. Every 
educated man is dependent upon his own country for 
the language that he uses ; and again, that language is 
itself dependent on other languages from which it is 
derived ; and, farther, the modern author is indebted 
for a continual stimulus and man}^ a suggestion to the 
writings of his predecessors, not in his own country 
only but in far distant lands. He cannot, therefore, 
sa}' in any absolute way, ' ' My books are my own," but 
he may preserve a certain mental independence which 
will allow him to say that with truth in a relative sense. 
If he expresses himself such as he is, an idiosj-ncrasy 



INDEPENDENCE. 13 

affected but not annihilated by education, he may say 
that his books are his own. 

Few English authors have studied past literature 
more willingly than Shelley and Tennyson, and none 
are more original. In these cases idiosyncrasj* has 
been affected by education, but instead of being annihi- 
lated thereby it has gained from education the means 
of expressing its own inmost self more clearly. We 
have the true Shelle} r , the born Tennyson, far more 
perfectly than we should ever have possessed them if 
their own minds had not been opened by the action of 
other minds. Culture is like wealth, it makes us more 
ourselves, it enables us to express ourselves. The 
real nature of the poor and the ignorant is an obscure 
and doubtful problem, for we can never know the in- 
born powers that remain in them undeveloped till they 
die. In this way the help of the race, so far from 
being unfavorable to individuality, is necessary to it. 
Claude helped Turner to become Turner. In complete 
isolation from art, however magnificently surrounded 
by the beauties of the natural world, a man does not 
express his originality as a landscape-painter, he is 
simpl} T incapable of expressing anything in paint. 

But now let us inquire whether there may not be 
cases in which the labors of others, instead of helping 
originality to express itself, act as a check to it by 
making originality superfluous. 

As an illustration of this possibility I may take the 
modern railway system. Here we have the labor and 
ingenuity of the race applied to travelling, greatly to 
the convenience of the individual, but in a manner 



14 INDEPENDENCE. 

which is totally repressive of originality and indifferent 
to personal tastes. People of the most different idiosyn- 
crasies travel exactly in the same wa}\ The landscape- 
painter is hurried at speed past beautiful spots that he 
would like to contemplate at leisure ; the archaeologist 
is whirled b}< the site of a Eoman camp that he would 
willingly pause to examine ; the mountaineer is not per- 
mitted to climb the tunnelled hill, nor the swimmer to 
cross in his own refreshing, natural way the breadth of 
the iron-spanned river. And as individual tastes are 
disregarded, so individual powers are left uncultivated 
and unimproved. The only talent required is that of 
sitting passively on a seat and of enduring, for hours 
together, an unpleasant though mitigated vibration. 
The skill and courage of the horseman, the endurance 
of the pedestrian, the art of the paddler or the oarsman, 
are all made superfluous by this system of travelling 
by machines, in which previous labors of engineers 
and mechanics have determined everything beforehand. 
Happily, the love of exercise and enterprise has pro- 
duced a reaction of individualism against this levelling 
railway sj^stem, a reaction that shows itself in many 
kinds of slower but more adventurous locomotion and 
restores to the individual creature his lost independence 
by allowing him to pause and stop when he pleases ; a 
reaction delightful to him especially in this, that it 
gives him some pride and pleasure in the use of his 
own muscles and his own wits. There are still, hap- 
pil} T , Englishmen who would rather steer a cutter across 
the Channel in rough weather than be shot through a 
long hole in the chalk. 



INDEPENDENCE. 15 

What the railway is to physical motion, settled con- 
ventions are to the movements of the mind. Conven- 
tion is a contrivance for facilitating what we write 
or speak by which we are relieved from personal ef- 
fort and almost absolved from personal responsibility. 
There are men whose whole art of living consists in 
passing from one conventionalism to another as a trav- 
eller changes his train. Such men may be envied for 
the skill with which they avoid the difficulties of life. 
They take their religion, their politics, their education, 
their social and literary opinions, all as provided by the 
brains of others, and they glide through existence with 
a minimum of personal exertion. For those who are 
satisfied with easy, conventional ways the desire for 
intellectual independence is unintelligible. What is 
the need of it? Why go, mentally, on a bicycle or in a 
canoe by your own toilsome exertions when you may 
sit so very comfortably in the train, a rug round your 
lazy legs and your softly capped head in a corner? 

The French ideal of " good form " is to be undistin- 
guishable from others ; by which it is not understood 
that }'ou are to be undistinguishable from the multitude 
of poor people, but one of the smaller crowd of rich 
and fashionable people. Independence and originality 
are so little esteemed in what is called " good society ' : 
in France that the adjectives " independant" and 
" original" are constantly used in a bad sense. "M 
est tres independant" often means that the man is of 
a rude, insubordinate, rebellious temper, unfitting him 
for social life. "11 est original" or more contempt- 
uonsty, " (Test un original" means that the subject of the 



16 INDEPENDENCE, 

criticism has views of his own which are not the fash- 
ionable views, and which therefore (whatever may be 
their accuracy) are proper objects of well-bred ridicule. 

I cannot imagine any state of feeling more destruc- 
tive of all interest in human intercourse than this, for 
if on going into society I am only to hear the fashiona- 
ble opinions and sentiments, what is the gain to me who 
know them too well already? I could even repeat 
them quite accurately with the proper conventional 
tone, so why put myself to inconvenience to hear that 
dull and wearisome play acted over again? The only 
possible explanation of the pleasure that French people 
of some rank appear to take in hearing things, which 
are as stale as they are inaccurate, repeated by every 
one the} 7 know, is that the repetition of them appears 
to be one of the signs of gentility, and to give alike to 
those who utter them and to those who hear, the pro- 
found satisfaction of feeling that they are present at 
the mysterious rites of Caste. 

There is probably no place in the whole world where 
the feeling of mental independence is so complete as it 
is in London. There is no place where differences of 
opinion are more marked in character or more frank 
and open in expression ; but what strikes one as partic- 
ularly admirable in London is that in the present day 
(it has not always been so) men of the most opposite 
opinions and the most various tastes can profess their 
opinions and indulge their tastes without inconvenient 
consequences to themselves, and there is hardly any 
opinion, or any eccentricity, that excludes a man from 
pleasant social intercourse if he does not make himself 



INDEPENDENCE. 17 

impossible and intolerable b} r bad manners. This inde- 
pendence gives a savor to social intercourse in London 
that is lamentably wanting to it elsewhere. There is a 
strange and novel pleasure (to one who lives habitually 
in the country) in hearing men and women say what 
they think without deference to any local public opinion. 

In many small places this local public opinion is so 
despotic that there is no individual independence in 
society, and it then becomes necessary that a man who 
values his independence, and desires to keep it, should 
learn the art of living contentedly outside of society. 

It has often occurred to me to reflect that there are 
many men in London who enjo} r a pleasant and even 
a high social position, who live with intelligent people, 
and even with people of great wealth and exalted rank, 
and yet who, if their lot had been cast in certain small 
provincial towns, would have found themselves rigor- 
ously excluded from the upper local circles, if not from 
all circles whatsoever. 

I have sometimes asked myself, when travelling on 
the railway through France, and visiting for a few 
hours one of those sleepy little old cities, to me so 
delightful, in which the student of architecture and the 
lover of the picturesque find so much to interest them, 
what would have been the career of a man having, for 
example, the capacity and the convictions of Mr. Glad- 
stone, if he had passed all the j^ears of his manhood in 
such a place. 

It commonly happens that when Nature endows a 
man with a vigorous personality and its usual accom- 
paniment, an independent way of seeing things, she 

2 



18 



INDEPENDENCE. 



gives him at the same time powerful talents with which 
to defend his own originality ; but in a small and an- 
cient cit} r , where everything is traditional, intellectual 
force is of no avail, and learning is of no use. In such 
a city, where the upper class is an exclusive caste 
impenetrable by ideas, the eloquence of Mr. Gladstone 
would be ineffectual, and if exercised at all would be 
considered in bad taste. His learning, even, would 
tend to separate him from the unlearned local aris- 
tocracy. The simple fact that he is in favor of par- 
liamentary government, without any more detailed 
information concerning his political opinions, would 
put him be} T ond the pale, for parliamentary government 
is execrated b} T the French rural aristocracy, who toler- 
ate nothing short of a determined monarchical absolu- 
tism. His religious views would be looked upon as those 
of a low Dissenter, and it would be remembered against 
him that his father was in trade. Such is the difference, 
as a field for talent and originality, between London 
and an aristocratic little French cit} T , that those very 
qualities which have raised our Prime Minister to a not 
undeserved pre-eminence in the great place would have 
kept nim out of society in the small one. He might, 
perhaps, have talked politics in some cafe with a few 
shop-keepers and attorneys. 

It may be objected that Mr. Gladstone, as an Eng- 
lish Liberal, would naturally be out of place in France 
and little appreciated there, so I will take the cases of 
a Frenchman in France and an Englishman in England. 
A brave French officer, who was at the same time a 
gentleman of ancient lineage and good estate, chose 



INDEPENDENCE. 19 

(for reasons of his own which had no connection with 
social intercourse) to live upon a property that hap- 
pened to be situated in a part of France where the 
aristocracy was strongly Catholic and reactionary. He 
then found himself excluded from " good society," be- 
cause he was a Protestant and a friend to parliamentary 
government. Reasons of this kind, or the counter- 
reasons of Catholicism and disapprobation of parlia- 
ments, would not exclude a polished and amiable 
gentleman from society in London. I have read in a 
biographical notice of Sidney Dobell that when he lived 
at Cheltenham he was excluded from the society of the 
place because his parents were Dissenters and he had 
been in trade. 

In cases of this kind, where exclusion is due to hard 
prejudices of caste or of religion, a man who has all 
the social gifts of good manners, kind-heartedness, 
culture, and even wealth, may find himself outside the 
pale if he lives in or near a smalL place where society 
is a strong little clique well organized on definitely 
understood principles. There are situations in which 
exclusion of that kind means perfect solitude. It may 
be argued that to escape solitude the victim has nothing 
to do but associate with a lower class, but this is not 
easy or natural, especially when, as in Dobell's case, 
there is intellectual culture. Those who have refined 
manners and tastes and a love for intellectual pursuits, 
usually find themselves disqualified for entering with 
any real heartiness and enjoyment into the social life 
of classes where these tastes are undeveloped, and 
where the thoughts flow in two channels, — the serious 



20 INDEPENDENCE. 

channel, studded with anxieties about the means of 
existence, and the humorous channel, which is a diver- 
sion from the other. Far be it from me to say any- 
thing that might imply any shade of contempt or 
disapprobation of the humorous spirit that is Nature's 
own remedy for the evils of an anxious life. It does 
more for the mental health of the middle classes than 
could be done by the most sublimated culture ; and if 
anything concerning it is a subject for regret it is that 
culture makes us incapable of enjoying poor jokes. It 
is, however, a simple matter of fact that although men 
of great culture may be humorists (Mr. Lowell is a 
brilliant example) , their humor is both more profound 
in the serious intention that lies under it, and vastly 
more extensive in the field of its operations than the 
trivial humor of the uneducated ; whence it follows 
that although humor is the faculty by which different 
classes are brought most easily into cordial relations, 
the humorist who has culture will probably find him- 
self a Vetroit with humorists who have none, whilst 
the cultured man who has no humor, or whose humor- 
ous tendencies have been overpowered b}^ serious 
thought, is so terribly isolated in uneducated society 
that he feels less alone in solitude. To realize this 
truth in its full force, the reader has only to imagine 
John Stuart Mill trying to associate with one of those 
middle-class families that Dickens loved to describe, 
such as the Wardle family in Pickwick. 

It follows from these considerations that unless a 
man lives in London, or in some other great capital 
city, he may easily find himself so situated that he 
must learn the art of being happy without society. 



INDEPENDENCE. 21 

As there is no pleasure in military life for a soldier 
who fears death, so there is no independence in civil 
existence for the man who has an overpowering dread 
of solitude. 

There are two good reasons against the excessive 
dread of solitude. The first is that solitude is very 
rarely so absolute as it appears from a distance ; and 
the second is that when the evil is real, and almost 
complete, there are palliatives that may lessen it to 
such a degree as to make it, at the worst, supportable, 
and at the best for some natures even enjoyable in a 
rather sad and melancholy way. 

Let us not deceive ourselves with conventional notions 
on the subject. The world calls " solitude" that con- 
dition in which a man lives outside of " society," or, 
in other words, the condition in which he does not pay 
formal calls and is not invited to state dinners and 
dances. Such a condition may be very lamentable, 
and deserving of polite contempt, but it need not be 
absolute solitude. 

Absolute solitude would be the state of Crusoe on 
the desert island, severed from human kind and never 
hearing a human voice ; but this is not the condition of 
any one in a civilized country who is out of a prison 
cell. Suppose that I am travelling in a country where 
I am a perfect stranger, and that I stay for some days 
in a village where I do not know a soul. In a surpris- 
ingly short time I shall have made acquaintances and 
begun to acquire rather a home-like feeling in the place. 
My new acquaintances may possibly not be rich and 
fashionable : they may be the rural postman, the inn- 



22 INDEPENDENCE. 

keeper, the stone-breaker on the roadside, the radical 
cobbler, and perhaps a mason or a joiner and a few 
more or less untidy little children ; but every morning 
their greeting becomes more friendly, and so I feel 
myself connected still with that great human race to 
which, whatever may be my sins against the narrow 
laws of caste and class, I still unquestionably belong. 
It is a positive advantage that our meetings should be 
accidental and not so long as to involve any of the 
embarrassments of formal social intercourse, as I could 
not promise myself that the attempt to spend a whole 
evening with these humble friends might not cause 
difficulties for me and for them. All I maintain is that 
these little chance talks and greetings have a tendency 
to keep me cheerful and preserve me from that moody 
state of mind to which the quite lonely man exposes 
himself. As to the substance and quality of our con- 
versations, I amuse myself by comparing them with 
conversations between more genteel people, and do not 
always perceive that the disparity is very wide. Poor 
men often observe external facts with the greatest 
shrewdness and accuracy, and have interesting things 
to tell when they see that you set up no barrier of pride 
against them. Perhaps they do not know much about 
architecture and the graphic arts, but on these subjects 
they are devoid of the false pretensions of the upper 
classes, which is an unspeakable comfort and relief. 
They teach us many things that are worth knowing. 
Humble and poor people were amongst the best edu- 
cators of Shakspeare, Scott, Dickens, Wordsworth, 
George Eliot. Even old Homer learned from them 



INDEPENDENCE. 23 

touches of nature which have done as much for his 
immortality as the fire of his wrathful kings. 

Let me give the reader an example of this chance 
intercourse just as it really occurred. I was drawing 
architectural details in and about a certain foreign 
cathedral, and had the usual accompaniment of youthful 
spectators who liked to watch me working, as greater 
folks watch fashionable artists in their studios. Some- 
times they rather incommoded me, but on my com- 
plaining of the inconvenience, two of the bigger bo3's 
acted as policemen to defend me, which they did with 
stern authority and promptness. After that one highly 
intelligent little bo} 7 brought paper and pencil from his 
father's house and set himself to draw what I was 
drawing. The subject was far too difficult for him, but 
I gave him a simpler one, and in a very short time he 
was a regular pupil. Inspired by his example, three 
other little boys asked if they might do likewise, so I 
had a class of four. Their manner towards me was 
perfect, — not a trace of rudeness nor of timidity either, 
but absolute confidence at once friendly and respectful. 
Eveiy day when I went to the cathedral at the same 
hour my four little friends greeted me with such frank 
and visible gladness that it could neither have been 
feigned nor mistaken. During our lessons they sur- 
prised and interested me greatly by the keen observa- 
tion the} 7 displayed ; and this was true more particularly 
of the bright little leader and originator of the class. 
The house he lived in was exactly opposite the rich 
west front of the cathedral ; and I found that, young as 
he was (a mere child), he had observed for himself 



24 INDEPENDENCE. 

almost all the details of its sculpture. The statues, 
groups, bas-reliefs, aud other oruarneuts were all, for 
hirn, so many separate subjects, and not a confused 
enrichment of labored stone- work as they so easily 
might have been. He had notions, too, about chro- 
nology, telling me the dates of some parts of the cathe- 
dral and asking me about others. His mother treated 
me with the utmost kindness and invited me to sketch 
quietly from her windows. I took a photographer up 
there, and set his big camera, and we got such a photo- 
graph as had been deemed impossible before. Now in 
all this does not the reader perceive that I was enjoying 
human intercourse in a very delicate and exquisite way ? 
What could be more charming and refreshing to a soli- 
tary student than this frank and hearty friendship of 
children who caused no perceptible hindrance to his 
work, whilst the}' effectually dispelled sad thoughts? 

Two other examples may be given from the expe- 
rience of a man who has often been alone and seldom 
felt himself in solitude. 

I remember arriving, long ago, in the evening at the 
head of a salt-water loch in Scotland, where in those 
days there existed an exceedingly small beginning of 
a watering-place. Soon after landing I walked on the 
beach with no companion but the beauty of nature and 
the "long, long thoughts" of youth. In a short time 
I became aware that a middle-aged Scotch gentleman 
was taking exercise in the same solitary waj\ He 
spoke to me, and we were soon deep in a conversation 
that began to be interesting to both of us. He was a 
resident in the place and invited me to his house, where 



INDEPENDENCE. 25 

our talk continued far into the night. I was obliged 
to leave the little haven the next day, but my recollec- 
tion of it now is like the memorandum of a conversa- 
tion. I remember the wild romantic scenery and the 
moon upon the water, and the steamer from Glasgow 
at the pier ; but the real satisfaction of that day con- 
sisted in hours of talk with a man who had seen much, 
observed much, thought much, and was most kindly 
and pleasantly communicative, — a man whom I had 
never spoken to before, and have never seen or heard 
of since that now distant but well-remembered evening. 
The other instance is a conversation in the cabin of a 
steamer. I was alone, in the depth of winter, making 
a voyage by an unpopular route, and during a long, 
dark night. It was a dead calm. We were only three 
passengers, and we sat together by the bright cabin- 
fire. One of us was a young officer in the British navy, 
just of age ; another was an anxious-looking man of 
thirty. Somehow the conversation turned to the sub- 
ject of inevitable expenses ; and the sailor told us that 
he had a certain private income, the amount of which 
he mentioned. " I have exactly the same income," 
said the man of thirty, " but I married very early and 
have a wife and family to maintain ; " and then — as we 
did not know even his name, and he was not likely 
to see us again — he seized the opportunity (under the 
belief that he was kindly warning the young sailor) of 
telling the whole story of his anxieties in detail. The 
point of his discourse was that he did not pretend to be 
poor, or to claim sympatlry, but he powerfully described 
the exact nature of his position. What had been his 



26 INDEPENDENCE. 

private income had now become the public revenue of a 
household. It all went in housekeeping, almost indepen- 
dently of his will and outside of his control. He had his 
share in the food of the family, and he was just decently 
clothed, but there was an end to personal enterprises. 
The economy and the expenditure of a free and intelli- 
gent bachelor had been alike replaced by a dull, me- 
thodical, uncontrollable outgo ; and the man himself, 
though now called the head of a family, had discovered 
that a new impersonal necessity was the real master, 
and that he lived like a child in his own house. " This," 
he said, " is the fate of a gentleman who marries on 
narrow means, unless he is cruelly selfish." 

Frank and honest conversations of this kind often 
come in the way of a man who travels by himself, and 
they remain with him afterwards as a part of his knowl- 
edge of life. This informal intercourse that comes by 
chance is greatly undervalued, especially by Englishmen, 
who are seldom very much disposed to it except in the 
humbler classes ; but it is one of the broadly scattered, 
inestimable gifts of Nature, like the refreshment of air 
and water. Many a healthy and happy mind has en- 
joyed little other human intercourse than this. There 
are millions who never get a formal invitation, and yet 
in this accidental way they hear many a bit of enter- 
taining or instructive talk. The greatest charm of it 
is its consistency with the most absolute independence. 
No abandonment of principle is required, nor any false 
assumption. You stand simply on your elementary 
right to consideration as a decent human being within 
the great pale of civilization. 



INDEPENDENCE. 27 

There is, however, another sense in which every 
superior person is greatly exposed to the evil of soli- 
tude if he lives outside of a great capital city. 

Without misanthropy, and without any unjust or 
unkind contempt for our fellow-creatures, we still must 
perceive that mankind in general have no other pur- 
pose than to live in comfort with little mental exertion. 
The desire for comfort is not wholly selfish, because 
people want it for their families as much as for them- 
selves, but it is a low motive in this sense, that it is 
scarcely compatible with the higher kinds of mental ex- 
ertion, whilst it is entirely incompatible with devotion 
to great causes. The object of common men is not to 
do noble work by their own personal efforts, but so to 
plot and contrive that others may be industrious for 
their benefit, and not for their highest benefit, but in 
order that they may have curtains and carpets. 

Those for whom accumulated riches have already 
provided these objects of desire seldom care greatly 
for anything except amusements. If they have ambi- 
tion, it is for a higher social rank. 

These three common pursuits, comfort, amusements, 
rank, lie so much outside of the disciplinary studies 
that a man of studious habits is likely to find himself 
alone in a peculiar sense. As a human being he is not 
alone, but as a serious thinker and worker he may find 
himself in complete solitude. 

Many readers will remember the well-known passage 
in Stuart Mill's autobiography, in which he dealt with 
this subject. It has often been quoted against him, 
because he went so far as to say that " a person of high 



28 INDEPENDENCE. 

intellect should never go into unintellectual society, 
unless he can enter it as an apostle," a passage not 
likely to make its author beloved by society of that 
kind; yet Mill was not a misanthropist, he was only 
anxious to preserve what there is of high feeling and 
high principle from deterioration by too much contact 
with the common world. It was not so much that he 
despised the common world, as that he knew the in- 
finite preciousness, even to the common people them- 
selves, of the few better and higher minds. He knew 
how difficult it is for such minds to " retain their higher 
principles unimpaired," and how at least " with respect 
to the persons and affairs of their own day they insen- 
sibly adopt the modes of feeling and judgment in which 
they can hope for sympathy from the company they 
keep." 

Perhaps I may do well to offer an illustration of this, 
though from a department of culture that may not have 
been in Mill's view when he wrote the passage. 

I myself have known a certain painter (not belonging 
to the English school) who had a severe and elevated 
ideal of his art. As his earnings were small he went 
to live in the country for econonw. He then began to 
associate intimately with people to whom all high aims 
in painting were unintelligible. Gradually he himself 
lost his interest in them and his nobler purposes were 
abandoned. Finally, art itself was abandoned and he 
became a coffee-house politician. 

So it is with all rare and exceptional pursuits if once 
we allow ourselves to take, in all respects, the color of 
the common world. It is impossible to keep up a 



INDEPENDENCE. 29 

foreign language, an art, a science, if we are living 
away from' other followers of our pursuit and cannot 
endure solitude. 

It follows from this that there are many situations in 
which men have to learn that particular kind of inde- 
pendence which consists in bearing isolation patiently 
for the preservation of their better selves. In a world 
of common-sense they have to keep a little place apart 
for a kind of sense that is sound and rational but 
not common. 

This isolation would indeed be difficult to bear if it 
were not mitigated by certain palliatives that enable 
a superior mind to be healthy and active in its loneli- 
ness. The first of these is reading, which is seldom 
valued at its almost inestimable worth. By the variety 
of its records and inventions, literature continually af- 
fords the refreshment of change, not to speak of that 
variety which may be had so easily by a change of lan- 
guage when the reader knows several different tongues, 
and the other marvellous variet} 7 due to difference in the 
date of books. In fact, literature affords a far wider 
variety than conversation itself, for we can talk only 
with the living, but literature enables us to descend, 
like Ulysses, into the shadowy kingdom of the dead. 
There is but one defect in literature, — that the talk is 
all on one side, so that we are listeners, as at a sermon 
or a lecture, and not sharers in some antique sym- 
posium, our own brows crowned with flowers, and our 
own tongues loosened with wine. The exercise of the 
tongue is wanting, and to some it is an imperious 
need, so that they will talk to the most uncongenial 



30 INDEPENDENCE. 

human beings, or even to parrots and dogs. If we 
value books as the great palliative of solitude and 
help to mental independence, let us not undervalue those 
intelligent periodicals that keep our minds modern and 
prevent us from living altogether in some other century 
than our own. Periodicals are a kind of correspond- 
ence more easily read than manuscript and involving 
no obligation to answer. There is also the great pal- 
liative of occasional direct correspondence with those 
who understand our pursuits ; and here we have the 
advantage of using our own tongues, not physically, 
but at least in an imaginative way. 

A powerful support to some minds is the constantly 
changing beauty of the natural world, which becomes 
like a great and ever-present companion. I am anxious 
to avoid any exaggeration of this benefit, because I 
know that to many it counts for nothing ; and an author 
ought not to think only of those who have his own 
mental constitution ; but although natural beauty is of 
little use to one solitary mind, it may be like a living 
friend to another. As a paragraph of real experience 
is worth pages of speculation, I may say that I have 
always found it possible to live happily in solitude, pro- 
vided that the place was surrounded by varied, beauti- 
ful, and changeful scenery, but that in ugly or even 
monotonous places I have felt society to be as necessary 
as it was welcome. Byron's expression, — 
" I made me friends of mountains," 

and Wordsworth's, 

"Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her." 



INDEPENDENCE. 31 

are not more than plain statements of the companion- 
ship that some minds find in the beauty of landscape. 
They are often accused of affectation, but in truth I 
believe that we who have that passion, instead of ex- 
pressing more than we feel, have generally rather a 
tendency to be reserved upon the subject, as we seldom 
expect sympathy. Many of us would rather live in 
solitude and on small means at Como than on a great 
income in Manchester. This may be a foolish pref- 
erence ; but let the reader remember the profound 
utterance of Blake, that if the fool would but persevere 
in his folly he would become wise. 

However powerful may be the aid of books and 
natural scenery in enabling us to bear solitude, the 
best help of all must be found in our occupations them- 
selves. Steady workers do not need much company. 
To be occupied with a task that is difficult and ardu- 
ous, but that we know to be within our powers, and to 
awake early every morning with the delightful feeling 
that the whole day can be given to it without fear of 
interruption, is the perfection of happiness for one 
who has the gift of throwing himself heartily into his 
work. When night comes he will be a little weary, 
and more disposed for tranquil deep than to " danser 
jusqu' au jour chez 1'ambassadeur de France." 

This is the best independence, — to have something 
to do and something that can be done, and done most 
perfectly, in solitude. Then the lonely hours flow on 
like smoothly gliding water, bearing one insensibly to 
the evening. The workman says, "Is my sight fail- 
ing ? " and lo the sun has set ! 



32 INDEPENDENCE. 

There is but one objection to this absorption in 
worthy toil. It is that as the day passes so passes 
life itself, that succession of ma^ days. The work- 
man thinks of nothing but his work, and finds the time 
all too short. At length he suddenly perceives that he 
is old, and wonders if life might not have been made 
to seem a little longer, and if, after all, it has been 
quite the best policy always to avoid ennui* 



OF PASSIONATE LOVE. B3 



ESSAY III. 

OF PASSIONATE LOVE. 

'TPHE wonder of love is that, for the time being, it 
-*■ makes us ardently desire the presence of one per- 
son and feel indifferent to all others of her sex. It is 
commonly spoken of as a delusion, but I do not see any 
delusion here, for if the presence of the beloved person 
satisfies his craving, the lover gets what he desires and 
is not more the victim of a deception than one who 
succeeds in satisfying any other want. 

Again, it is often said that men are blinded by love, 
but the fact that one sees certain qualities in a beloved 
person need not imply blindness. If you are in love 
with a little woman it is not a reason for supposing her 
to be tall. I will even venture to affirm that you may 
love a woman passionately and still be quite clearly 
aware that her beauty is far inferior to that of another 
whose coming thrills you with no emotion, whose de- 
parture leaves with you no regret. 

The true nature of a profound passion is not to attrib- 
ute every physical and mental quality to its object, 
but rather to think, "Such as she is, with the endow- 
ments that are really her own, I love her above all 
women, though I know that she is not so beautiful 
as some are, nor so learned as some others." The 
only real deception to which a lover is exposed is that 

3 



84 OF PASSIONATE LOVE. 

he may overestimate the strength of his own passion. 
If he has not made this mistake he is not likely to 
make any other, since, whatever the indifferent may see, 
or fail to see, in the woman of his choice, he surely 
finds in her the adequate reason for her attraction. 

Love is commonly treated as if it belonged only to 
the flowering of the spring-time of life, but strong and 
healthy natures remain capable of feeling the passion 
in great force long after they are supposed to have left 
it far behind them. It is, indeed, one of the signs of 
a healthy nature to retain for many years the freshness 
of the heart which makes one liable to fall in love, as 
a healthy palate retains the natural early taste for deli- 
cious fruits. 

This freshness of the heart is lost far more surely by 
debauchery than by years ; and for this reason worldly 
parents are not altogether dissatisfied that their sons 
should " sow their wild oats" in j^outh, as they believe 
that this kind of sowing is a preservative against the> 
dangers of pure love and an imprudent or unequal mar- 
riage. The calculation is well founded. After a few 
years of indiscriminate debauchery a young man is 
likely to be deadened to the sweet influences of love 
and therefore able to conduct himself with steady world- 
liness, either remaining in celibacy or marrying for 
position, exactly as his interests may dictate. 

The case of Shelley is an apt illustration of this dan- 
ger. He had at the same time a horror of debauchery 
and an irresistible natural tendency to the passion of 
love. 

From the worldly point of view both his connections 



OF PASSIONATE LOVE. 35 



rentlLfeB 8 AS.Y Hafa 




were degrading for a young 

he followed the very common 

tion and married a lady of rai k gffSf flffrfllf 4(ffRf|flP^i' " 

criminate immoralit}', is it aff"TlirJirsl u" an unlikely 
supposition that he would have given less dissatisfac- 
tion to his friends ? 

As to the permanence of love, or its transitoriness, 
the plain and candid answer is that there is no real 
assurance either way. To predict that it will certainly 
die after fruition is to shut one's eyes against the evi- 
dent fact that men often remain in love with mistresses 
or wives. On the other hand, to assume that love is 
fixed and made permanent in a magical way by mar- 
riage is to assume what would be desirable rather than 
what really is. There are no magical incantations by 
which Love may be retained, yet sometimes he will 
rest and dwell with astonishing tenacity when there 
seem to be the strongest reasons for his departure. If 
there were any ceremony, if any sacrifice could be made 
at an altar, by which the capricious little deit} T might 
be conciliated and won, the wisest might hasten to per- 
form that ceremony and offer that acceptable sacrifice ; 
but he cares not for any of our rites. Sometimes he 
stays, in spite of cruelty, misery, and wrong ; sometimes 
he takes flight from the hearth where a woman sits and 
grieves alone, with all the attractions of health, beauty, 
gentleness, and refinement. 

Boys and girls imagine that love in a poor cottage 
or a bare garret would be more blissful than indiffer- 
ence in a palace, and the notion is thought foolish and 
romantic by the wise people of the world ; but the boys 



36 OF PASSIONATE LOVE. 

and girls are right in their estimate of Love's great 
power of cheering and brightening existence even in 
the very humblest situations. The possible error against 
which they ought to be clearly warned is that of sup- 
posing that Love would always remain contentedly in 
the cottage or the garret. Not that he is any more 
certain to remain in a mansion in Belgrave Square, not 
that a garret with him is not better than the vast Vati- 
can without him ; but when he has taken his flight, and 
is simply absent, one would rather be left in comforta- 
ble than in beggarly desolation. 

The poets speak habitually of love as if it were a 
passion that -could be safely indulged, whereas the 
whole experience of modern existence goes to show 
that it is of all passions the most perilous to happiness 
except in those rare cases where it can be followed by 
marriage ; and even then the peril is not ended, for mar- 
riage gives no certainty of the duration of love, but con- 
stitutes of itself a new danger, as the natures most 
disposed to passion are at the same time the most im- 
patient of restraint. 

There is this peculiarity about love in a well-regu- 
lated social state. It is the only passion that is quite 
strictly limited in its indulgence. Of the intellectual 
passions a man may indulge several different ones 
either successively or together ; in the ordinary physi- 
cal enjo3 T ments, such as the love of active sports or the 
pleasures of the table, he may carry his indulgence very 
far and vary it without blame ; but the master passion 
of all has to be continually quelled, the satisfactions 
that it asks for have to be continually refused to it, 



OF PASSIONATE LOVE. 37 

unless some opportunity occurs when they may be 
granted without disturbing any one of many different 
threads in the web of social existence ; and these 
threads, to a lover's eye, seem entirely unconnected 
with his hope. 

In stating the fact of these restraints I do not dispute 
their necessity. On the contrary, it is evident that 
infinite practical evil would result from liberty. Those 
who have broken through the social restraints and 
allowed the passion of love to set up its stormy and 
variable tyranny in their hearts have led unsettled 
and unhappy lives. Even of love itself the}' have not 
enjoyed the best except in those rare cases in which 
the lovers have taken bonds upon themselves not less 
durable than those of marriage ; and even these unions, 
which give no more liberty than marriage itself gives, 
are accompanied by the unsettled feeling that belongs 
to all irregular situations. 

It is easy to distinguish in the conventional manner 
between the lower and the higher kinds of love, but it 
is not so easy to establish the real distinction. The 
conventional difference is simply between the passion 
in marriage and out of it ; the real distinction would be 
between different feelings ; but as these feelings are not 
ascertainable by one person in the mind or nerves of 
another, and as in most cases they are probably much 
blended, the distinction can seldom be accurately made 
in the cases of real persons, though it is marked trench- 
antly enough in works of pure imagination. 

The passion exists in an infinite variety, and it is so 
strongly influenced b} r elements of character which have 



38 OF PASSIONATE LOVE. 

apparently nothing to do with it, that its effects on con- 
duct are to a great extent controlled by them. For 
example, suppose the case of a man with strong pas- 
sions combined with a selfish nature, and that of another 
with passions equally strong, but a rooted aversion to 
all personal satisfactions that might end in misery for 
others. The first would ruin a girl with little hesita- 
tion ; the second would rather suffer the entire privation 
of her society by quitting the neighborhood where she 
lived. 

The interference of qualities that lie outside of pas- 
sion is shown ver} T curiously and remarkably in intellec-. 
tual persons in this wa3 T . They ma}' have a strong 
temporal passion for somebody without intellect or 
culture, but they are not likely to be held permanently 
by such a person ; and even when under the influence of 
the temporary desire they may be clearly aware of the 
danger there would be in converting it into a permanent 
relation, and so they may take counsel with themselves 
and subdue the passion or fly from the temptation, 
knowing that it would be sweet to yield, but that a 
transient delight would be paid for by years of weari- 
ness in the future. 

Those men of superior abilities who have bound 
themselves for life to some woman who could not pos- 
sibly understand them, have generally either broken 
their bonds afterwards or else avoided as much as 
possible the tiresomeness of a tete-a-tete, and found 
in general society the means of occasionally enduring 
the dullness of their home. For short and transient 
relations the principal charm in a woman is either 



OF PASSIONATE LOVE. 39 

beauty or a certain sweetness, but for any permanent 
relation the first necessity of all is that she be com- 
panionable. 

Passionate love is the principal subject of poets and 
novelists, who usually avoid its greatest difficulties by 
well-known means of escape. Either the passion fin- 
ishes tragically by the death of one of the parties, or 
else it comes to a natural culmination in their union, 
whether according to social order or through a breach 
of it. In real life the story is not always rounded off 
so conveniently. It may happen, it probably often 
does happen, that a passion establishes itself where it 
has no possible chance of satisfaction, and where, instead 
of being cut short by death, it persists through a con- 
siderable part of life and embitters it. These cases are 
the more unfortunate that hopeless desire gives an 
imaginary glory to its own object, and that, from the 
circumstances of the case, this halo is not dissipated. 

It is common amongst hard and narrow people, who 
judge the feelings of others by their own want of them, 
to treat all the painful side of passion with contempt- 
uous levity. They say that people never die for love, 
and that such fancies may easily be chased away by 
the exercise of a little resolution. The profounder 
students of human nature take the subject more seri- 
ously. Each of the fc great poets (including, of course, 
the author of the "Bride of Lammermoor," in which 
the poetical elements are so abundant) has treated the 
aching pain of love and the tragedy to which it may 
lead, as in the deaths of Haidee, of Lucy Ashton, of 
Juliet, of Margaret. In real life the powers of evil do 



40 OF PASSIONATE LOVE. 

not perceive any necessity for an artistic conclusion of 
their work. A wrinkled old maid may still preserve 
in the depths of her own heart, quite unsuspected hy 
the j 7 oung and lively people about her, the unextin- 
guished embers of a passion that first made her wretched 
fift}' years before ; and in the long, solitary hours of a 
dull old age she may live over and over again in mem- 
ory the brief delirium of that wild and foolish hope 
which was followed by years of self-repression. 

Of all the painful situations occasioned by passionate 
love, I know of none more lamentable than that of an 
innocent and honorable woman who has been married 
to an unsuitable husband and who afterwards makes 
the discovery that she involuntarily loves another. In 
well-regulated, moral societies such passions are re- 
pressed, but they cannot be repressed without suffering 
which has to be endured in silence. The victim is 
punished for no fault when none is committed ; but she 
may suffer from the forces of nature like one who hun- 
gers and thirsts and sees a fair banquet provided, } T et 
is forbidden to eat or drink. It is difficult to suppress 
the heart's regret, "Ah, if we had known each other 
earlier, in the days when I was free, and it was not 
wrong to love ! " Then there is the haunting fear that 
the woful secret may one day reveal itself to others. 
Might it not be suddenly and unexpectedly betrayed 
by a momentary absence of self-control? This has 
sometimes happened, and then there is no safety but in 
separation, immediate and decided. Suppose a case 
like the following, which is said to have really occurred. 
A perfectly honorable man goes to visit an intimate 



OF PASSIONATE LOVE. 41 

friend, walks quietly in the garden one afternoon with 
his friend's wife, and suddenly discovers that he is the 
object of a passion which, until that moment, she has 
steadily controlled. One outburst of shameful tears, 
one pitiful confession of a life's unhappiness, and they 
part forever! This is what happens when the friend 
respects his friend and the wife her husband. What 
happens when both are capable of treachery is known 
to the readers of English newspaper reports and French 
fictions. 

It seems as if, with regard to this passion, civilized 
man were placed in a false position between Nature 
on the one hand and civilization on the other. Nature 
makes us capable of feeling it in very great strength 
and intensity, at an age when marriage is not to be 
thought of, and when there is not much self-control. 
The tendency of high civilization is to retard the 
time of marriage for men, but there is not any corre- 
sponding postponement in the awakening of the pas- 
sions. The least civilized classes marry early, the more 
civilized later and later, and not often from passionate 
love, but from a cool and prudent calculation about 
general chances of happiness, a calculation embracing 
very various elements, and in itself as remote from 
passion as the Proverbs of Solomon from the Song of 
Songs. It consequently happens that the great majority 
of young gentlemen discover early in life that passionate 
love is a danger to be avoided, and so indeed it is ; but 
it seems a peculiar misfortune for civilized man that so 
natural an excitement, which is capable of giving such 
a glow to all his faculties as nothing else can give, an 



42 OF PASSIONATE LOVE. 

excitement which exalts the imagination to poetry and 
increases courage till it becomes heroic devotion, whilst 
it gives a glamour of romance to the poorest and most 
prosaic existence, — it seems, I say, a misfortune that 
a passion with such unequalled powers as these should 
have to be eliminated from wise and prudent life. The 
explanation of its early and inconvenient appearance 
may be that before the human race had attained a posi- 
tion of any tranquillity or comfort, the average life was 
very short, and it was of the utmost importance that the 
flame of existence should be passed on to another gen- 
eration without delay. We inherit the rapid develop- 
ment which saved the race in its perilous past, but we 
are embarrassed by it, and instead of elevating us to a 
more exalted life it often avenges itself for the refusal 
of natural activhty by its own corruption, the corrup- 
tion of the best into the worst, of the fire from heaven 
into the filth of immorality. The more this great pas- 
sion is repressed and expelled, the more frequent does 
immorality become. 

Another very remarkable result of the exclusion of 
passionate love from ordinary existence is that the idea 
of it takes possession of the imagination. The most 
melodious poetry, the most absorbing fiction, are alike 
celebrations of its nrysteries. Even the wordless voice 
of music wails or languishes for love, and the audience 
that seems only to hear flutes and violins is in reality 
listening to that endless song of love which thrills 
through the passionate universe. Well may the rebels 
against Nature revolt against the influence of Art ! It 
is everywhere permeated by passion. The cold marble 






( OF PASSIONATE LOVE. 43 

warms with it, the opaque pigments palpitate with it, 
the dull actor has the tones of genius when he wins 
access to its perennial inspiration. Even those forms 
of art which seem remote from it do yet confess its 
presence. You see a picture of solitude, and think that 
passion cannot enter there, but everything suggests it. 
The tree bends clown to the calm water, the gentle 
breeze caresses every leaf, the white-pated old moun- 
tain is visited by the short-lived summer clouds. If, in 
the opening glade, the artist has sketched a pair of 
lovers, 3 T ou think they naturally complete the scene ; if 
he has omitted them, it is still a place for lovers, or has 
been, or will be on some sweet eve like this. What 
have stars and winds and odors to do with love ? The 
poets know all about it, and so let Shelley tell us : — 

" I arise from dreams of Thee 
In the first sweet sleep of night, 
When the winds are breathing low 
And the stars are shining bright: 
I arise from dreams of thee, 
And a spirit in my feet 
Has led me — who knows how/? — 
To thy chamber-window, Sweet ! 
The wandering airs they faint 
On the dark, the silent stream ; 
The champak odors fail 
Like sweet thoughts in a dream ; 
The nightingale's complaint 
It dies upon her heart, 
As I must die on thine 
O beloved as thou art 1 " 



44 COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 



ESSAY IV. 

COMPANIONSHIP IN MAERIAGE. 

TF the reader has ever had for a travelling-companion 
-*- some person totally unsuited to his nature and 
quite unable to enter into the ideas that chiefly interest 
him, unable, even, to see the things that he sees and 
always disposed to treat negligently or contemptuously 
the thoughts and preferences that are most his own, he 
may have some faint conception of what it must be to 
find one's self tied to an unsuitable companion for the 
tedious journey of this mortal life ; and if, on the other 
hand, he has ever enjoyed the pleasure of wandering 
through a country that interested him along with a friend 
who could understand his interest, and share it, and 
whose society enhanced the charm of every prospect 
and banished dulness from the dreariest inns, he may in 
some poor and imperfect degree realize the happiness 
of those who have chosen the life-companion wisely. 

When, after an experiment of months or years, the 
truth becomes plainly evident that a great mistake has 
been committed, that there is really no companionship, 
that there never will be, never can be, any mental com- 
munion between the two, but that life in common is to be 
like a stiff morning call when the giver and the receiver 
of the visit are beating their brains to find something to 
say, and dvead the gaps of silence, then in the blank and 



COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 45 

dreary outlook comes the idea of separation, and some- 
times, in the loneliness that follows, a wild rebellion 
against social order, and a reckless attempt to find in 
some more suitable union a compensation for the first 
sad failure. 

The world looks with more indulgence on these 
attempts when it sees reason to believe that the desire 
was for intellectual companionship than when incon- 
stant passions are presumed to have been the motives ; 
and it has so happened that a few persons of great 
eminence have set an example in this respect which 
has had the unfortunate effect of weakening in a per- 
ceptible degree the ancient social order. It is not 
possible, of course, that there can be many cases like 
that of George Eliot and Lewes, for the simple rea- 
son that persons of their eminence are so rare ; but if 
there were only a few more cases of that kind it is 
evident that the laws of society would either be con- 
fessedly powerless, or else it would be necessary to 
modify them and bring them into harmony with new 
conditions. The importance of the case alluded to 
lies in the fact that the lady, though she was excluded 
(or willingly excluded herself) from general society, 
was still respected and visited not only by men but by 
ladies of blameless life. Nor was she generally re- 
garded as an immoral person even by the outer world. 
The feeling about her was one of regret that the faith- 
ful companionship she gave to Lewes could not be 
legally called a marriage, as it was apparently a model 
of what the legal relation ought to be. The object of 
his existence was to give her every kind of help and to 



46 COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 

spare her every shadow of annoyance. He read to her, 
wrote letters for her, advised her on everything, and 
whilst full of admiration for her talents was able to do 
something for their most effectual employment. She, 
on her part, rewarded him with that which he prized 
above riches, the frank and affectionate companionship 
of an intellect that it is needless to describe and of a 
heart full of the most lively sympathy and ready for the 
most romantic sacrifices. 

In the preceding generation we have the well-known 
instances of Shelley, B3T011, and Goethe, all of whom 
sought companionship outside of social rule, and en- 
joj^ed a sort of happiness probably not unembittered 
03- the false position in which it placed them. The 
sad story of Shelley's first marriage, that with Harriett 
Westbrook, is one of the best instances of a deplorable 
but most natural mistake. She is said to have been 
a charming person in many ways. "Harriett," says 
Mr. Eossetti, " was not only delightful to look at but 
altogether most agreeable. She dressed with exquisite 
neatness and propriety ; her voice was pleasant and her 
speech cordial ; her spirits were cheerful and her man- 
ners good. She was well educated, a constant and 
agreeable reader ; adequately accomplished in music." 
But in spite of these qualities and talents, and even of 
Harriett's willingness to learn, Shelley did not find her 
to be companionable for him ; and he unfortunately did 
discover that another young lady, Mary Godwin, was 
companionable in the supreme degree. That this latter 
idea was not illusoiy is proved by his happj 7 life after- 
wards with Mary so far as a life could be happy that was 



COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 47 

poisoned b} T a tragic recollection. 1 Before that miser- 
able ending, before the waters of the Serpentine had 
closed over the wretched existence of Harriett, Shelle}^ 
said, " Every one who knows me must know that the 
partner of my life should be one who can feel poetiy 
and understand philosophy. Harriett is a noble animal, 
but she can do neither." Here we have a plain state- 
ment of that great need for companionship which was 
a part of Shell's nature. It is often connected with 
its apparent opposite, the love of solitude. Shelley was 
a lover of solitude, which means that he liked full and 
adequate human intercourse so much that the insuffi- 
cient imitation of it was intolerable to him. Even that 
sweetest solitude of all, when he wrote the " Revolt of 
Islam " in summer shades, to the sound of rippling 
waters, was willingly exchanged for the society of the 
one dearest and best companion : — 

" So now ray summer-task is ended, Mary, 

And I return to thee, mine own heart's home ; 
As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery, 

Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome. 
Nor thou disdain that, ere my fame become 
A star among the stars of mortal night 

(If it indeed may cleave its native gloom), 
Its doubtful promise thus I would unite 
With thy beloved name, thou child of love and light. 

1 The exact degree of blame due to Shelley is very difficult to 
determine. He had nothing to do with the suicide, though the 
separation was the first in a train of circumstances that led to it.' 
It seems clear that Harriett did not desire the separation, and 
clear also that she did nothing to assert her rights. Shelley ought 
not to have left her, but he had not the patience to accept as per' 
manent the consequences of a mistaken marriage. 



48 COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 

The toil which stole from thee so many an hour 

Is ended, and the u'uit is at thy feet. 
No longer where the woods to frame a hower 

With interlaced branches mix and meet, 

Or where, with sound like many voices sweet, 
Waterfalls leap among wild islands green 

Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat 
Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen : 
But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been." 

It is not surprising that the companionship of con- 
jugal life should be like other friendships in this, that 
a first experiment may be a failure and a later experi- 
ment a success. We are all so fallible that in matters 
of which we have no experience we generally commit 
great blunders. Marriage unites all the conditions that 
make a blunder probable. Two young people, with very 
little conception of what an unsurmountable barrier a 
difference of idiosyncrasy may be, are pleased with each 
other's youth, health, natural gayety, and good looks, 
and fancy that it would be delightful to live together. 
They many, and in many cases discover that somehow, 
in spite of the most meritorious efforts, they are not 
companions. There is no fault on either side ; they 
try their best, but the invisible demon, incompatibility, 
is too strong for them. 

From all that we know of the characters of Lord and 
Lady BjTon it seems evident that they never were 
likely to enjoy life together. He committed the mis- 
take of marrying a lady on the strength of her excel- 
lent reputation. " She has talents and excellent 
qualities," he said before marriage ; as if all the arts 
and sciences and all the virtues put together could 



COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 49 

avail without the one quality that is never admired, 
never understood by others, — that of simple suitable- 
ness. She was ' ' a kind of pattern in the North," and 
he " heard of nothing but her merits and her wonders." 
He did not see that all these excellencies were dangers, 
that the consciousness of them and the reputation for 
them would set the lady up on a judgment seat of her 
own, from which she would be continually observing the 
errors, serious or trivial, of that faulty specimen of the 
male sex that it was her lofty mission to correct or to 
condemn. All this he found out in due time and ex- 
pressed in the bitter lines, — 

" Oh ! she was perfect past all parallel 

Of any modern female saint's comparison 



Perfect she was." 

The story of his subsequent life is too well known 
to need repetition here. All that concerns our pres- 
ent subject is that ultimately, in the Countess Guiccioli, 
he found the woman who had, for him, that one quality, 
suitableness, which outweighs all the perfections. She 
did not read English, but, though ignorant alike of the 
splendor and the tenderness of his verse, she knew the 
nature of the man ; and he enjoyed in her society, 
probably for the first time in his life, the most exquisite 
pleasure the masculine mind can ever know, that of 
being looked upon by a feminine intelligence with clear 
sight and devoted affection at the same time. The rela- 
tion that existed between Byron and the Countess Guic- 
cioli is one outside of our morality, a revenge of Nature 
against a marriage s} r stem that could take a girl not 
4 



50 COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 

3^et sixteen and make her the third wife of a man more 
than old enough to be her grandfather. In Italy this 
revenge of Nature against a bad social system is ac- 
cepted, within limits, and is an all but inevitable conse- 
quence of marriages like that of Count Guiccioli, which, 
however they may be approved by custom and conse- 
crated by religious ceremonies, remain, nevertheless, 
amongst the worst (because the most unnatural) im- 
moralities. All that need be said in his young wife's 
defence is that she followed the only rule habitually 
acted upon by mankind, the custom of her country and 
her class, and that she acted, from beginning to end, 
with the most absolute personal abnegation. On Byron 
her influence was wholly beneficial. She raised him 
from a mode of life that was deplored by all his true 
friends, to the nearest imitation of a happy marriage 
that was accessible to him ; but the irregularity of their 
position brought upon them the usual Nemesis, and 
after a broken intercourse, during which he never could 
feel her to be really his own, he went to Missolonghi 
and wrote, under the shadow of Death, — 

" The hope, the fear, the jealous care, 
The exalted portion of the pain 
And power of love, I cannot share, 
But wear the chain." 

The difference between Byron and Goethe in regard 
to feminine companionship lies chiefly in this, — that 
whilst Byron does not seem to have been very suscepti- 
ble of romantic love (though he was often entangled in 
liaisons more or less degrading), Goethe was con- 
stantly in love and imaginative in his passions, as might 



COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 51 

be expected from a poet. He appears to have encour- 
aged himself in amorous fancies till they became almost 
or quite realities, as if to give himself that experience 
of various feeling out of which he afterwards created 
poems. He was himself clearly conscious that his 
poetry was a transformation of real experiences into 
artistic forms. The kuowledge that he came by his 
poetry in this wa} 7 would naturally lead him to encour- 
age rather than stifle the sentiments which gave him 
his best materials. It is quite within the comprehensive 
powers of a complex nature that a poet might lead a 
dual life ; being at the same time a man, ardent, very 
susceptible of all passionate emotions, and a poet, ob- 
serving this passionate life and accumulating its results. 
In all this there is very little of what occupies us just 
now, the search for a satisfactory companionship. The 
woman with whom he most enjo}'ed that was the Bar- 
oness von Stein, but even this friendship was not ulti- 
mately satisfying and had not a permanent character. 
It lasted ten or eleven 3-ears, till his return from the 
Italian journej', when "she thought him cold, and her 
resource was — reproaches. The resource was more 
feminine than felicitous. Instead of sympathizing with 
him in his sorrow at leaving Itaty, she felt the regret 
as an offence ; and perhaps it was ; but a truer, nobler 
nature would surely have known how to merge its own 
pain in sympathy with the pain of one beloved. He 
regretted Italy ; she was not a compensation to him ; 
she saw this, and her self-love suffered." 1 And so it 
ended. " He offered friendship in vain ; he had wounded 

1 Lewes's " Life of Goethe." 



52 COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 

the self-love of a vain woman." Goethe's longest con- 
nection was with Christiane Vulpius, a woman quite 
unequal to him in station and culture, and in that re- 
spect immeasurably inferior to the Baroness von Stein, 
but superior to her in the power of affection, and able 
to charm and retain the poet by her lively, pleasant 
disposition and her perfect constancy. Gradually she 
rose in his esteem, and every year increased her influ- 
ence over him. From the precarious position of a 
mistress out of his house she first attained that of a wife 
in all but the legal title, as he received her under his 
roof in defiance of all the good society of Weimar ; and 
lastly she became his lawful wife, to the still greater 
scandal of the polite world. It may even be said that 
her promotion did not end here, for the final test of 
love is death ; and when Christiane died she left behind 
her the deep and lasting sorrow that is happiness still 
to those who feel it, though happiness in its saddest 
form. 

The misfortune of Goethe appears to have been that 
he dreaded and avoided marriage in early life, perhaps 
because he was instinctively aware of his own ten- 
dency to form many attachments of limited duration ; 
but his treatment of Christiane Vulpius, so much be- 
yond any obligations which, according to the world's 
code, he had incurred, is sufficient proof that there was 
a power of constancy in his nature ; and if he had mar- 
ried early and suitably it is possible that this constancy 
might have stayed and steadied him from the beginning. 
It is easy to imagine that a marriage with a cultivated 
woman of his own class would have given him, in 



COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 53 

course of time, by mutual adaptation, a much more 
complete companionship than either of those semi-asso- 
ciations with the Frau von Stein and Christiane, each 
of which only included a part of his great nature. 
Christiane, however, had the better part, km heartfelt 
affection. 

The case of John Stuart Mill and the remarkable 
woman by whose side he lies buried at Avignon, is the 
most perfect instance of thorough companionship on 
record ; and it is remarkable especially because men 
of great intellectual power, whose ways of thinking are 
quite independent of custom, and whose knowledge is so 
far outside the average as to carry their thoughts con- 
tinually beyond the common horizon, have an extreme 
difficulty in associating themselves with women, who are 
naturally attached to custom, and great lovers of what 
is settled, fixed, limited, and clear. The ordinary dis- 
position of women is to respect what is authorized much 
more than what is original, and they willingly, in the 
things of the mind, bow before anything that is re- 
peated with circumstances of authorit}^ An isolated 
philosopher has no costume or surroundings to entitle 
him to this kind of respect. He wears no vestment, 
he is not magnified hy any architecture, he is not sup- 
ported by superiors or deferred to by subordinates. 
He stands simply on his abilities, his learning, and his 
honesty. There is, however, this one chance in his 
favor, that a certain natural sympathy may possibly 
exist between him and some woman on the earth, — if 
he could only find her, — and this woman would make 
him independent of all the rest. It was Stuart Mill's 



54 COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 

rare good-fortune to find this one woman, early in life, 
in the person of Mrs. Taylor ; and as his nature was 
intellectual and affectionate rather than passionate, he 
was able to rest contented with simple friendship for a 
period of twenty years. Indeed this friendship itself, 
considered only as such, was of very gradual growth. 
"To be admitted," he wrote, " into any degree of 
mental intercourse with a being of these qualities, could 
not but have a most beneficial influence on my develop- 
ment ; though the effect was only gradual, and many 
years elapsed before her mental progress and mine 
went forward in the complete companionship they at 
last attained. The benefit I received was far greater 
than any I could hope to give. . . . What I owe, even 
intellectually, to her, is in its detail almost infinite." 

Mill speaks of his marriage, in 1851 (I use his words), 
to the lady whose incomparable worth had made her 
friendship the greatest source to him both of happiness 
and of improvement during many years in which the} 7 
never expected to be in any closer relation to one an- 
other. " For seven and a half years," he goes on to say, 
' ' that blessing was mine ; for seven and a half only ! I 
can say nothing which could describe, even in the faint- 
est manner, what that loss was and is. But because 
I know that she would have wished it, I endeavor to 
make the best of what life I have left and to work on 
for her purposes with such diminished strength as can 
be derived from thoughts of her and communion with 
her memory. . . . Since then I have sought for such 
alleviation as my state admitted of, by the mode of life 
which most enabled me to feel her still near me. I 



COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 55 

bought a cottage as close as possible to the place where 
she is buried, and there her daughter (my fellow-sufferer 
and now my chief comfort) and I live constantly during 
a great portion of the year. My objects in life are 
solely those which were hers ; my pursuits and occupa- 
tions those in which she shared, or sympathized, and 
which are indissolubly associated with her. Her mem- 
ory is to me a religion, and her approbation the stand- 
ard by which, summing up as it does all worthiness, 
I endeavor to regulate my life." 

The examples that I have selected (all purposely 
from the real life of well-known persons) are not alto- 
gether encouraging. They show the difficulty that 
there is in finding the true companion. George Eliot 
found hers at the cost of a rebellion against social order 
to which, with her regulated mind and conservative 
instincts, she must have been by nature little disposed. 
Shelley succeeded only after a failure and whilst the 
failure still had rights over his entire existence. His 
life was like one of those pictures in which there is a 
second work over a first, and the painter supposes the 
first to be entirely concealed, which indeed it is for a 
little time, but it reappears afterwards and spoils the 
whole. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory than the 
domestic arrangements of Ityron. He married a lady 
from a belief in her learning and virtue, only to find 
that learning and virtue were hard stones in comparison 
with the daily bread of sympathy. Then, after a vain 
waste of years in error, he found true love at last, but 
on terms which involved too heavy sacrifices from her 
who gave it, and procured him no comfort, no peace, 



56 COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 

if indeed his nature was capable of any restfulness in 
love. Goethe, after a number of attachments that 
ended in nothing, gave himself to one woman by his 
intelligence and to another by his affections, not belong- 
ing with his whole nature to either, and never in his 
long life knowing what it is to have equal companion- 
ship in one's own house. Stuart Mill is contented, for 
twenty 3'ears, to be the esteemed friend of a lady mar- 
ried to another, without hope of any closer relation ; 
and when his death permits them to think of marriage, 
they have only seven } T ears and a half before them, and 
he is forty-five years old. 

Cases of this kind would be discouraging in the 
extreme degree, were it not that the difficulty is excep- 
tional. High intellect is in itself a peculiarity, in a 
certain sense it is really an eccentricity, even when so 
thoroughly sane and rational as in the cases of George 
Eliot, Goethe, and Mill. It is an eccentricity in this 
sense, that its mental centre does not coincide with 
that of ordinary people. The mental centre of ordi- 
nary people is simply the public opinion, the common 
sense, of the class and locality in which they live, so 
that, to them, the common sense of people in another 
class, another locality, appears irrational or absurd. 
The mental centre of a superior person is not that of 
class and locality. Shelley did not belong to the Eng- 
lish aristocracy, though he was born in it ; his mind did 
not centre itself in aristocratic ideas. George Eliot did 
not belong to the middle class of the English midlands, 
nor Stuart Mill to the London middle classes. So far 
as Byron belonged to the aristocracy it was a mark of 



COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 57 

inferiority in him, owing to a touch of vulgarity in his 
nature, the same vulgarity which made him believe 
that he could not be a proper sort of lord without a 
prodigal waste of mone}-. Yet even Byron was not 
centred in local ideas ; that which was best in him, his 
enthusiasm for Greece, was not an essential part of 
Nottinghamshire common sense. Goethe lived much 
more in one locality, and even in a small place ; but if 
an} T thing is remarkable in him it is his complete inde- 
pendence of Weimar ideas. It was the Duke, his 
friend and master, not the public opinion of Weimar, 
that allowed Goethe to be himself. He refused even 
to be classed intellectually, and did not recognize the 
vulgar opinion that a poet cannot be scientific. In all 
these cases the mental centre was not in txnj local com- 
mon sense. It was a result of personal studies and 
observations acting upon an individual idios} T ncras} T . 

We may now perceive how infinitely easier it is for 
ordinary people to meet and be companionable than 
for these rare and superior minds. Ordinary people, 
if bred in the same neighborhood and class, are sure 
to have a great fund of ideas in common, all those 
ideas that constitute the local common sense. If you 
listen attentively to their conversations 3'ou will find 
that they hardly ever go outside of that. They men- 
tion incidents and actions, and test them one after 
another by a tacit reference to the public opinion of 
the place. Therefore the} r have a good chance of 
agreeing, of considering each other reasonable ; and 
this is why it is a generally received opinion that mar- 
riages between people of the same locality and the same 



58 COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 

class offer the greatest probability of happiness. So 
they do, in ordinary cases, but if there is the least 
touch of any original talent or genius in one of the par- 
ties, it is sure to result in many ideas that will be out- 
side of any local common sense, and then the other 
party, living in that sense, will consider those ideas 
peculiar, and perhaps deplorable. Here, then, are ele- 
ments of dissension lying quite ready like explosive 
materials, and the merest accident may shatter in a 
moment the whole fabric of affection. To prevent such 
an accident an artificial kind of intercourse is adopted 
which is not real companionship, or anything resem- 
bling it. 

The reader may imagine, and has probably observed 
in real life, a marriage in which the husband is a man 
of original power, able to think forcibly and profoundly, 
and the wife a gentle being quite unable to enter into 
any thought of that qualit} T . In cases of that kind the 
husband may be affectionate and even tender, but he 
is careful to utter nothing bej^ond the safest common- 
places. In the presence of his wife he keeps his mind 
quite within the circle of custom. He has, indeed, no 
other resource. Custom and commonplace are the pro- 
tection of the intelligent against misapprehension and 
disapproval. 

Marriages of this unequal kind are an imitation of 
those equal marriages in which both parties live in the 
local common sense ; but there is this vast difference 
between them, that in the imitation the more intelligent 
of the two parties has to stifle half his nature. An 
intelligent man has to make up his mind in early life 



COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 59 

whether he has courage enough for such a sacrifice or 
not. Let him try the experiment of associating for a 
short time with people who cannot understand him, 
and if he likes the feeling of repression that results 
from it, if he is able to stop short always at the right 
moment, if he can put his knowledge on the shelf as 
one puts a book in a library, then perhaps he may 
safely undertake the long labor of companionship with 
an unsuitable wife. 

This is sometimes done in pure hopelessness of ever 
finding a true mate. A man has no belief in any real 
companionship, and therefore simply conforms to cus- 
tom in his marriage, as Montaigne did, allying himself 
with some young lady who is considered in the neigh- 
borhood to be a suitable match for him. This is the 
mariage de convenance. Its purposes are intelligible 
and attainable. It may add considerably to the dignity 
and convenience of life and to that particular kind of 
happiness which results from satisfaction with our own 
worldly prudence. There is also the probability that 
by perfect courtesy, by a scrupulous observance of the 
rules of intercourse between highly civilized persons 
who are not extremely intimate, the parties who con- 
tract a marriage of this kind may give each other the 
mild satisfactions that are the reward of the well-bred. 
There is a certain pleasure in watching every movement 
of an accomplished lady, and if she is your wife there 
may also be a certain pride. She receives your guests 
well ; she holds her place with perfect self-possession at 
your table and in her drawing-room ; she never commits 
a social solecism ; and you feel that j t ou can trust her 



60 COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 

absolutely. Her private income is a help in the main- 
tenance of } T our establishment and so increases your 
credit in the world. She gives you in this wa} T a series 
of satisfactions that may even, in course of time, pro- 
duce rather affectionate feelings. If she died you 
would certainly regret her loss, and think that life was, 
on the whole, decidedly less agreeable without her. 

But alas for the dreams of youth if this is all that is 
to be gained by marriage ! Where is the sweet friend 
and companion who was to have accompanied us 
through prosperous or adverse } T ears, who was to 
have charmed and consoled us, who was to have given 
us the infinite happiness of being understood and loved 
at the same time? Were all those dreams delusions? 
Is the best companionship a mere fiction of the fanc} T , 
not existing anywhere upon the earth ? 

I believe in the promises of Nature. I believe that 
in every want there is the promise of a possible satis- 
faction. If we are hungry there is food somewhere, if 
we are thirsty there is drink. But in the things of the 
world there is often an indication of order rather than 
a realization of it, so that in the confusion of accidents 
the hungry man ma} T be starving in a beleaguered 
city and the thirsty man parched in the Sahara. All 
that the wants indicate is that their satisfaction is pos- 
sible in nature. Let us believe that, for every one, the 
true mate exists somewhere in the world. She is 
worth seeking for at an}^ cost of trouble or expense, 
worth travelling round the globe to find, worth the 
endurance of labor and pain and privation. Men 
suffer all this for objects of far inferior importance ; 



COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 61 

they risk life for the chance of a ribbon, and sacrifice 
leisure and peace for the smallest increase of social 
position. What are these vanities in comparison with 
the priceless benefit, the continual blessing, of having 
with you alwa3 T s the one person whose presence can 
deliver j t ou from all the evils of solitude without im- 
posing the constraints and lrypocrisies of society? 
"With her } t ou are free to be as much yourself as when 
alone ; you say what you think and she understands 
3 t ou. Your silence does not offend her ; she only thinks 
that there will be time enough to talk together after- 
wards. You know that you can trust her love, which 
is as unfailing as a law of nature. The differences of 
idiosyncrasy that exist between you only add interest 
to your intercourse \>y preventing her from becoming a 
mere echo of yourself. She has her own wa} T s, her own 
thoughts that are not yours and } r et are all open to you, 
so that 3'ou no longer dwell in one intellect only but 
have constant access to a second intellect, probably 
more refined and elegant, richer in what is delicate and 
beautiful. There you make unexpected discoveries ; 
you find that the first instinctive preference is more 
than justified by merits that you had not divined. You 
had hoped and trusted vaguely that there were certain 
qualities ; but as a painter who looks long at a natural 
scene is constantry discovering new beauties whilst he 
is painting it, so the long and loving observation of a 
beautiful human mind reveals a thousand unexpected 
excellences. Then come the trials of life, the sud- 
den calamities, the long and wearing anxieties. Each 
of these will only reveal more clearly the wonderful 



62 COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE. 

endurance, fidelity, and fortitude that there is in every 
noble feminine nature, and so build up on the founda- 
tion of 3~our early love an unshakable edifice of esteem 
and respect and love commingled, for which in our 
modern tongue we have no single term, but which our 
forefathers called "worship.'' 



FAMILY TIES. 63 



ESSAY V. 

FAMILY TIES. 

/^\NE of the most remarkable differences between 
^-^ the English and some of the Continental nations 
is the comparative looseness of family ties in England. 
The apparent difference is certainly very great ; the real 
difference is possibly not so great. It may be that a good 
deal of that warm family affection which we are con- 
stantly hearing of in France is only make-believe, but the 
keeping-up of a make-believe is often favorable to the 
reality. In England a great deal of religion is mere out- 
ward form ; but to be surrounded by the constant observ- 
ance of outward form is a great practical convenience 
to the genuine religious sentiment where it exists. 

In boyhood we suppose that all gentlemen of mature 
age who happen to be brothers must naturally have 
fraternal feelings ; in mature life we know the truth, hav- 
ing discovered that there are many brothers between 
whom no sentiment of fraternity exists. A foreigner 
who knows England well, and has observed it more 
carefully than we ourselves do, remarked to me that 
the fraternal relationship is not generally a cause of 
attachment in England, though there ma} T be cases 
of exceptional affection. It certainly often happens 
that brothers live contentedly apart and do not seem 
to feel the need of intercourse, or that such intercourse 



64 FAMILY TIES. 

as they have has no appearance of cordiality. A very 
common cause of estrangement is a natural difference 
of class. One man is so constituted as to feel more at 
ease in a higher class, and he rises ; his brother feels 
more at ease in a lower class, adopts its manners, and 
sinks. After a few 3-ears have passed the two will have 
acquired such different habits, both of thinking and liv- 
ing, that they will be disqualified for equal intercourse. 
If one brother is a gentleman in tastes and manners 
and the other not a gentleman, the vulgarity of the 
coarser nature will be all the more offensive to the re- 
fined one that there is the troublesome consciousness 
of a very near relationship and of a sort of indefinite 
responsibility. 

The frequency of coolness between brothers surprises 
us less when we observe how widety they may differ 
from each other in mental and physical constitution. 
One may be a sportsman, traveller, man of the world ; 
another a religious recluse. One may have a sensitive, 
imaginative nature and be keenly alive to the influences 
of literature, painting, and music ; his brother may be 
a hard, practical man of business, with a conviction that 
an interest in literary and artistic pursuits is only a 
sign of weakness. 

The extreme uncertainty that always exists about 
what really constitutes suitableness is seen as much 
between brothers as between other men ; for we some- 
times see a beautiful fraternal affection between broth- 
ers who seem to have nothing whatever in common, 
and sometimes an equal affection appears to be founded 
upon likeness. 



FAMILY TIES. G5 

Jealousy in its various forms is especially likely to 
arise between brothers, and between sisters also for the 
same reason, which is that comparisons are constantly 
suggested and even made with injudicious openness by 
parents and teachers, and b} T talkative friends. The 
development of the faculties in youth is always ex- 
tremely interesting, and is a constant subject of obser- 
vation and speculation. If it is interesting to on-lookers, 
it is still more likely to be so to the j'oung persons 
most concerned. They feel as young race-horses might 
be expected to feel towards each other if they could 
understand the conversations of trainers, stud-owners, 
and grooms. 

If a full account of family life could be generally 
accessible, if we could read autobiographies written by 
the several members of the same family, giving a sin- 
cere and independent account of their own youth, it 
would probably be found in most cases that jealousies 
were easily discoverable. They need not be very in- 
tense to create a slight fissure of separation that rnay 
be slowly widened afterwards. 

If you listen attentively to the conversation of broth- 
ers about brothers, of sisters about sisters, you will 
probably detect such little jealousies without difficulty. 
4 'My sister," said a lady in nry hearing, "was very 
much admired when she was young, but she aged pre- 
maturely." Behind this it was eas} T to read the com- 
parison with self, with a constitution less attractive to 
others but more robust and durable, and there was a 
faint reverberation of girlish jealousy about attentions 
paid foily years before. 

5 



FAMILY TIES. 



The jealousies of youth are too natural to deserve 
any serious blame, but they may be a beginning of future 
coolness. A boy will seem to praise the talents of his 
brother with the purpose of implying that the facilities 
given by such talents make industry almost superfluous, 
whilst his own more strenuous efforts are not appre- 
ciated as they deserve. Instead of soothing and calm- 
ing these natural jealousies some parents irritate and 
inflame them. They make wounding remarks that 
produce evil in after years. I have seen a sensitive 
boy wince under cutting sarcasms that he will remem- 
ber till his hair is gray. 

If there are fraternal jealousies in boyhood, when 
the material comforts and the outward show of exist 
ence are the same for brothers, much more are these 
jealousies likely to be accentuated in after-life, when 
differences of worldly success, or of inherited fortune, 
establish distinctions so obvious as to be visible to all. 
The operation of the aristocratic custom by which eldest 
sons are made very much richer than their brethren 
can scarcely be in favor of fraternal intimacy. No 
general rule can be established, because characters 
differ so widely. An eldest brother may be so amiable, 
so truly fraternal, that the cadets instead of feeling envy 
of his wealth may take a positive pride in it ; still, the 
natural effect of creating such a vast inequality is to 
separate the favored heir from the less-favored younger 
sons. I leave the reader to think over instances that 
may be known to him. Amongst those known to me 
I find several cases of complete or partial suspension 
of intercourse and others of manifest indifference and 



. 



FAMILY TIES. 67 

coolness. One incident recurs to my memory after a 
lapse of thirty } T ears. I was present at the departure 
of a young friend for India when his eldest brother was 
too indifferent to get up a little earlier to see him off, 
and said, "Oh, } r ou 're going, are you? Well, good- 
by, John ! " through his bedroom door. The lad carried 
a wound in his heart to the distant East. 

There is nothing in the mere fact of fraternity to 
establish friendship. The line of " In Memoriam," — 

" More than my brothers are to me," 

is simply true of every real friend, unless friendship adds 
itself to brotherhood, in which case the intimacy arising 
from a thousand details of early life in common, from 
the thorough knowledge of the same persons and places, 
and from the memories of parental affection, must give 
a rare completeness to friendship itself and make it in 
these respects even superior to marriage, which has the 
great defect that the associations of early life are not 
the same. I remember a case of wonderfully strong 
affection between two brothers who were daily compan- 
ions till death separated them ; but they were younger 
sons and their incomes were exactly alike ; their tastes, 
too, and all their habits were the same. The only other 
case that occurs to me as comparable to this one was 
also of two younger sons, one of whom had an extraor- 
dinary talent for business. They were partners in trade, 
and no dissension ever arose between them, because 
the superiority of the specially able man was affection- 
ately recognized and deferred to by the other. If, how- 
ever, they had not been partners it is possible that the 



68 FAMILY TIES. 

brilliant success of one brother might have created a 
contrast and made intercourse more constrained. 

The case of John Bright and his brother may be 
mentioned, as he has made it public in one of his 
most charming and interesting speeches. His political 
work has prevented him from laboring in his business, 
but his brother and partner has affectionately consid- 
ered him an active member of the firm, so that Mr. 
Bright has enjoyed an income sufficient for his political 
independence. In this instance the comparatively ob- 
scure brother has shown real nobility of nature. Free 
from the jealousy and envy which would have vexed a 
small mind in such a position he has taken pleasure in 
the fame of the statesman. It is easy to imagine the 
view that a mean mind would have taken of a similar 
situation. Let us acid that the statesman himself has 
shown true fraternal generosity of another kind, and 
perhaps of a more difficult kind, for it is often easier 
to confer an obligation than to accept it heartily. 

It has often been a subject of astonishment to me 
that between very near relations a sensitive feeling 
about pecuniary matters should be so lively as it is. 
I remember an instance in the last generation of a rich 
man in Cheshire who made a present of ten thousand 
pounds to a lady nearly related to him. He was very 
wealthy, she was not ; the sum would never be missed 
by him, whilst to her it made a great difference. What 
could be more reasonable than such a correction of the 
inequalities of fortune ? Many people would have re- 
fused the present, out of pride, but it was much kinder 
to accept it in the same good spirit that dictated the 



FAMILY TIES. 69 

offer. On the other hand, there are poor gentlefolks 
whose only fault is a sense of independence, so fa- 
rouche that nobody can get them to accept anything of 
importance, and any good that is done to them has 
to be plotted with consummate art. 

A wonderful light is thrown upon family relations 
when we become acquainted with the real state of those 
family pecuniary transactions that are not revealed to 
the public. The strangest discovery is the widely 
different ways in which pecuniary obligations are esti- 
mated by different persons, especially by different 
women. Men, I believe, take them rather more equally ; 
but as women go by sentiment they have a tendency to 
extremes, either exaggerating the importance of an 
obligation when they like to feel very much obliged, 
or else adopting the convenient theory that the gen- 
erous person is fulfilling a simple duty, and that there 
is no obligation whatever. One woman will go into 
ecstasies of gratitude because a brother makes her a 
present of a few pounds ; and another will never thank 
a benefactor who allows her, year by year, an annuity 
far larger than is justified by his precarious profes- 
sional income. In one real case a lady lived for many 
years on her brother's generosity and was openly hostile 
to him all the time. After her death it was found that 
she had insulted him in her will. In another case a 
sister dependent on her brother's bounty never thanked 
him or even acknowledged the receipt of a sum of 
money, but if the money was not sent to the day she 
would at once write a sharp letter full of bitter re- 
proaches for his neglect. The marvel is the incredible 



70 FAMILY TIES. 

patience with which toiling men will go on sending the 
fruits of their industry to relations who do not even 
make a pretence of affection. 

A frequent cause of hostilhry between very near rela- 
tions is the restriction of generosity. So long as you 
set no limit to your giving it is well, you are doing 
your duty ; but the moment you fix a limit the case is 
altered ; then all past sacrifices go for nothing, your 
glory has set in gloom, and you will be considered as 
more niggardly than if you had not begun to be gener- 
ous. Here is a real case, out of many. A man makes 
bad speculations, but conceals the full extent of his 
losses, and by the influence of his wife obtains impor- 
tant sums from a near relation of hers who half ruins 
himself to save her. When the full disaster is known 
the relation stops short and declines to ruin himself 
entirely ; she then bitterly reproaches him for his self- 
ishness. A very short time before writing the present 
Essay I was travelling, and met an old friend, a bachelor 
of limited means but of a most generous disposition, 
the kindest and most affectionate nature I ever knew in 
the male sex. I asked for news about his brother. 
"I never see him now ; a coldness has sprung up be- 
tween us." — "It must be his fault, then, for I am sure it 
did not originate with j T ou.' ? — " The truth is, he got into 
mone3 T difficulties, so I gave him a thousand pounds. 
He thought that under the circumstances I ought to 
have done more and broke off all intercourse. I really 
believe that if I had given him nothing we should have 
been more friendly at this da}'." 

The question how far we are bound to allow family 



FAMILY TIES. 71 

ties to regulate our intercourse is not easily treated in 
general terms, though it seems plainer in particular 
cases. Here is one for the reader's consideration. 

Owing to natural refinement, and to certain circum- 
stances of which he intelligently availed himself, one 
member of a family is a cultivated gentleman, whose 
habitual ways of thinking are of rather an elevated 
kind, and whose manners and language are invariably 
faultless. He is blessed with very near relations whose 
principal characteristic is loud, confident, overwhelm- 
ing vulgarity. He is always uncomfortable with these 
relations. He knows that the wa} r s of thinking and 
speaking which are natural to him will seem cold and 
uncongenial to them ; that not one of his thoughts can 
be exactly understood by them ; that his deficiency in 
what they consider heartiness is a defect he cannot get 
over. On the other hand, he takes no interest in what 
they say, because their opinions on all the subjects he 
cares about are too crude, and their information too 
scanty or erroneous. If he said what he felt impelled 
to say, all his talk would be a perpetual correction of 
their clumsy blunders. He has, therefore, no resource 
but to repress himself and try to act a part, the part of 
a pleased companion ; but this is wearisome, especially 
if prolonged. The end is that he keeps out of their 
way, and is set down as a proud, conceited person, 
and an unkind relative. In reality he is simply refined 
and has a difficulty in accommodating himself to the 
ways of all vulgar society whatever, whether composed 
of his own relations or of strangers. Does he deserve 
to be blamed for this? Certainly not. He has not the 



72 FAMILY TIES. 

flexibility, the dramatic power, to adapt himself to a 
lower state of civilization ; that is his only fault. His 
relations are persons with whom, if the}' were not re- 
lations, nobody would expect him to associate ; but 
because he and they happen to be descended from a 
common ancestor he is to maintain an impossible inti- 
macy. He wishes them no harm ; he is ready to make 
sacrifices to help them ; his misfortune is that he does 
not possess the humor of a Dickens that would have 
enabled him to find amusement in their vulgarity, and 
he prefers solitude to that infliction. 

There is a French proverb, " Les cousins ne sont pas 
parents." The exact truth would appear to be rather 
that cousins are relations or not just as it pleases them 
to acknowledge the relationship, and according to the 
natural possibilities of companionship between the 
parties. If they are of the same class in society 
(which does not always happen), and if they have 
pursuits in common or can understand each other's 
interests, and if there is that m}'sterious suitableness 
which makes people like to be together, then the fact 
of cousinship is seized upon as a convenient pretext 
for making intercourse more frequent, more intimate, 
and more affectionate ; but if there is nothing to attract 
one cousin to another the relationship is scarcely ac- 
knowledged. Cousins are, or are not, relations just as 
the}' find it agreeable to themselves. It need hardly 
be added that it is a general though not an invariable 
rule that the relationship is better remembered on the 
humbler side. The cousinly degree may be felt to be 
very close under peculiar circumstances. An only 



FAMILY TIES. 73 

child looks to his cousins for the brotherly and sisterly 
affection that fate has denied him at home, and he is 
not alwa} T s disappointed. Even distant cousins ma} T be 
truly fraternal, just as first cousins may happen to be 
very distant, the relationship is so variable and elastic 
in its nature. 

Unmarried people have often a great vague dread of 
their future wife's relations, even when the lady has 
not yet been fixed upon, and married people have some- 
times found the reality more terrible even than their 
gloomy anticipation. And } 7 et it may happen that some 
of these dreaded new relations will be unexpectedly 
valuable and supply elements that were grievously want- 
ing. Thej^ may bring new life into a dull house, they 
may enliven the sluggish talk with wit and information, 
they may take a too thoughtful and studious man out of 
the weary round of his own ideas. They ma}' even in 
course of time win such a place in one's affection that 
if they are taken away by death they will leave a great 
void and an enduring sorrow. I write these lines from 
a sweet and sad experience. 1 

Intellectual men are, more than others, liable to a 
feeling of dissatisfaction with their relations because 
they want intellectual sympathy and interest, which 
relations hardly ever give. The reason is extremely 
simple. Any special intellectual pursuit is understood 
only by a small select class of its own, and our relations 
are given us out of the general body of society without 

1 Only a poet can write of his private sorrows. In prose one 
cannot sing, — 

"A dirge for her, the doubly dead, iu that she died so young." 



74 FAMILY TIES. 

any selection, and they are not very numerous, so that 
the chances against our finding intellectual sympathy 
amongst them are calculably very great. As we grow 
older we get accustomed to this absence of sympathy 
with our pursuits, and take it as a matter of course ; 
but in j'outh it seems strange that what we feel and 
know to be so interesting should have no interest for 
those nearest to us. Authors sometimes feel a little 
hurt that their nearest relations will not read their 
books, and are but dimly aware that the}' have written 
an}^ books at all ; but do they read books of the same 
class by other writers? As an author } t ou are in the 
same position that other authors occupy, but with this 
difference, which is against you, that familiarity has 
made you a commonplace person in your own circle, 
and that is a bad opening for the reception of your 
higher thoughts. This want of intellectual s} T mpathy 
does not prevent affection, and we ought to appreciate 
affection at its full value in spite of it. Your brother 
or your cousin may be strongly attached to you per- 
sonally, with an old love dating from your boyhood, 
but he may separate you (the human creature that he 
knows) from the author of your books, and not feel 
the slightest curiosity about the books, believing that 
he knows you perfectly without them, and that they are 
only a sort of costume in which you perform before the 
public. A female relative who has given up her mind 
to the keeping of some clerg3~man, may scrupulously 
avoid your literature in order that it may not contami- 
nate her soul, and yet she ma}' love you still in a painful 
way and be sincerely sorry that you have no other pros- 
pect but that of eternal punishment. 



FAMILY TIES. 75 

I have sometimes heard the question proposed whether 
relations or friends were the more valuable as a support 
and consolation. Fate gives us our relations, whilst we 
select our friends ; and therefore it would seem at first 
sight that the friends must be better adapted for us ; 
but it ma}' happen that we have not selected with great 
wisdom, or that we have not had good opportunities for 
making a choice really answering to our deepest needs. 
Still, there must have been mutual affinity of some kind 
to make a friendship, whilst relations are all like tickets 
in a lottery. It may therefore be argued that the more 
relations we have, the better, because we are more 
likely to meet with two or three to love us amongst 
fifty than amongst five. 

The peculiar peril of blood-relationship is that those 
who are closely connected by it often permit themselves 
an amount of mutual rudeness (especially in the middle 
and lower classes) which they never would think of 
inflicting upon a stranger. In some families people 
really seem to suppose that it does not matter how 
roughly they treat each other. They utter unmeasured 
reproaches about trifles not worth a moment's anger ; 
they magnifj- small differences that only require to be 
let alone and forgotten, or they relieve the monotony 
of quarrels with an occasional fit of the sulks. Some- 
times it is an irascible father who is always scolding, 
sometimes a loud-tongued matron shrieks ' ' in her fierce 
volubility." Some children take up the note and fire 
back broadside for broadside ; others wait for a cessa- 
tion in contemptuous silence and calmly disregard the 
thunder. Family life indeed! domestic peace and 



76 FAMILY TIES. 

bliss ! Give me, rather, the bachelor's lonety hearth 
with a noiseless lamp and a book ! The manners of 
the ill-mannered are never so odious, unbearable, ex- 
asperating, as the} 7 are to their own nearest kindred. 
How is a lad to enjoy the society of his mother if she 
is perpetually "nagging" and "nattering" at him? 
How is he to believe that his coarse father has a tender 
anxiety for his welfare when everything that he does is 
judged with unfatherly harshness? Those who are 
condemned to live with people for whom scolding and 
quarrelling are a necessary of existence must either be 
rude in self-defence or take refuge in a sullen and 
stubborn taciturnity. Young people who have to live 
in these little domestic hells look forward to anj T change 
as a desirable emancipation. The}^ are ready to go to 
sea, to emigrate. I have heard of one who went into 
domestic service under a feigned name that he might be 
out of the range of his brutal father's tongue. 

The miseiy of uncongenial relations is caused mainly 
by the irksome consciousness that they are obliged to 
live together. " To think that there is so much space 
upon the earth, that there are so many houses, so many 
rooms, and yet that I am so unfortunate as to be com- 
pelled to live in the same lodging with this uncivilized, 
ill-conditioned fellow ! To think that there are such 
vast areas of tranquil silence, and } T et that I am com- 
pelled to hear the voice of that scolding woman ! " 
This is the feeling, and the relief would be temporary 
separation. In this, as in almost eveiything that con- 
cerns human intercourse, the rich have an immense 
advantage, as the} T can take only just so much of each 



FAMILY TIES. 77 

other's society as they find by experience to be agree- 
able. They can quietly, and without rudeness, avoid 
each other by living in different houses, and even in 
the same house they can have different apartments and 
be veiy little together. Imagine the difference be- 
tween two rich brothers, each with his suite of rooms 
in a separate tower of the paternal castle, and two 
very poor ones, inconveniently occupying the same 
narrow, uncomfortable bed, and unable to remain in the 
wretched paternal tenement without being constantly 
in each other's way. Between these extremes are a 
thousand degrees of more or less inconvenient nearness. 
Solitude is bad for us, but we need a margin of free 
space. If we are to be crowded let it be as the stars 
are crowded. They look as if they were huddled 
together, but every one of them has his own clear 
space in the illimitable ether. 



78 FATHERS AND SONS. 



ESSAY VI 

FATHERS AND SONS. 

r I "'HERE is a certain unsatisfactoriness in this rela- 
-*- tion in our time which is felt by fathers and often 
avowed by them when they meet, though it does not 
occupy any conspicuous place in the literature of life 
and manners. It has been fully treated by M. Legouve, 
the French Academician, in his own lively and elegant 
wa} T ; but he gave it a volume, and I must here confine 
myself to the few points which can be dealt with in the 
limits of a short Essay. 

We are in an interregnum between two systems. 
The old system, founded on the stern authorit}^ of the 
father, is felt to be out of harmony with the amenity of 
general social intercourse in modern times and also 
with the increasing gentleness of political governors 
and the freedom of the governed. It is therefore, by 
common consent, abandoned. Some new system that 
may be founded upon a clear intelligence of both the 
paternal and the filial relations has yet to come into 
force. Meanwhile, we are trying various experiments; 
suggested by the different characters and circumstances 
of fathers and sons, each father trying his own experi- 
ments, and we communicate to each other such results 
as we arrive at. 

It is obvious that the defect here is the absence of a 



FATHERS AND SONS. 79 

settled public opinion to which both parties would feel 
bound to defer. Under the old system the authority of 
the father was efficiently maintained, not only by the 
laws, but by that general consensus of opinion which 
is far more powerful than law. The new system, what- 
ever it may be, will be founded on general opinion 
again, but our present experimental condition is one 
of anarchy. 

This is the real cause of whatever may be felt as 
unsatisfactory in the modern paternal and filial rela- 
tions. It is not that fathers have become more unjust 
or sons more rebellious. 

The position of the father was in old times perfectly 
defined. He was the commander, not only armed by 
the law but by religion and custom. Disobedience to 
his dictates was felt to be out of the question, unless 
the insurgent was prepared to meet the consequences 
of open mutiny. The maintenance of the father's au- 
thority depended only on himself. If he abdicated it 
through indolence or weakness he incurred moral repro- 
bation not unmingled with contempt, whilst in the 
present day reprobation would rather follow a new 
attempt to vindicate the antique authority. 

Besides this change in public opinion there is a new 
condition of paternal feeling. The modern father, in 
the most civilized nations and classes, has acquired a 
sentiment that appears to have been absolutely unknown 
to his predecessors : he has acquired a dislike for com- 
mand which increases with the age of the son ; so that 
there is an unfortunate coincidence of increasing strength 
of will on the son's part with decreasing disposition to 



80 FATHERS AND SONS. 

restrain it on the father's part. What a modern father 
really desires is that a son should go right of his own 
accord, and if not quite of his own accord, then in 
consequence of a little affectionate persuasion. This 
feeling would make command unsatisfactory to us, even 
if it were followed by a military promptitude of obe- 
dience. We do not wish to be like captains, and our 
sons like privates in a company ; we care only to exer- 
cise a certain beneficent influence over them, and we 
feel that if we gave military orders we should destroy 
that peculiar influence which is of the most fragile and 
delicate nature. 

But now see the unexpected consequences of our 
modern dislike to command ! It might be argued that 
there is a certain advantage on our side from the very 
rarity of the commands we give, which endows them 
with extraordinarj 7 force. Would it not be more accu- 
rate to say that as we give orders less and less our sons 
become unaccustomed to receive orders from us, and 
if ever the occasion arises when we must give them a 
downright order it comes upon their feelings with a 
harshness so excessive that they are likely to think us 
t}Tannical, whereas if we had kept up the old habits 
of command such orders would have seemed natural 
and right, and would not have been less scrupulously 
obeyed? 

The paternal dislike to give orders personally has had 
a peculiar effect upon education. We are not yet quite 
imbecile enough to suppose that discipline can be en- 
tirely dispensed with ; and as there is very little of it in 
modern houses it has to be sought elsewhere, so boys 



FATHERS AND SONS. 81 

are placed more and more completely under the author- 
ity of schoolmasters, often living at such a distance 
from the father of the family that for several months at 
a time he can exercise no direct influence or authority 
over his own children. This leads to the establishment 
of a peculiar boyish code of justice. Boys come to 
think it not unjust that the schoolmaster should exer- 
cise authority, when if the father attempted to exercise 
authority of equal rigor, or anything approaching it, 
they would look upon him as an odious domestic tyrant, 
entirety forgetting that any power to enforce obedience 
which is possessed b} T the schoolmaster is held by him 
vicariously as the father's representative and delegate. 
From this we arrive at the curious and unforeseen con- 
clusion that the modern father only exercises strong 
authority through another person who is often a per- 
fect stranger and whose interest in the boy's present 
and future well-being is as nothing in comparison with 
the father's anxious and continual solicitude. 

The custom of placing the education of sons entirely 
in the hands of strangers is so deadly a blow to 
parental influence that some fathers have resolutely 
rebelled against it and tried to become themselves the 
educators of their children. James Mill is the most 
conspicuous instance of this, both for persistence and 
success. His way of educating his illustrious son has 
often been coarsely misrepresented as a merciless system 
of cram. The best answer to this is preserved for us 
in the words of the pupil himself. He said expressly : 
" Mine was not an education of cram," and that the 
one cardinal point in it, the cause of the good it effected, 
6 



82 FATHERS AND SONS. 

was that his father never permitted anything he learnt 
to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He 
greatly valued the training he had received, and fully 
appreciated its utility to him in after-life. " If I have 
accomplished anything," he says, " I owe it, amongst 
other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through 
the earty training bestowed on me by my father I 
started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter 
of a century over my contemporaries." 

But though in this case the pupil's feeling in after- 
life was one of gratitude, it maj T be asked what were 
his filial sentiments whilst this paternal education was 
going forward. This question also is clearly and 
frankly answered by Stuart Mill himself. He says 
that his father was severe ; that his authority was defi- 
cient in the demonstration of tenderness, though proba- 
bly not. in the reality of it ; that " he resembled most 
Englishmen in being ashamed of the signs of feeling, 
and by the absence of demonstration starving the feel- 
ings themselves." Then the son goes on to say that 
it was ' ' impossible not to feel true pity for a father 
who did, and strove to do, so much for his children, 
who would have so valued their affection, yet who must 
have been constantly feeling that fear of him was dry- 
ing it up at its source." And we probably have the 
exact truth about Stuart Mill's own sentiments when he 
saj's that the younger children loved his father tenderly, 
" and if I cannot say so much of myself I was always 
loyalty devoted to him." 

This contains the central difficulty about paternal 
education. If the choice were left to \)oys the} 7 would 



FATHERS AND SONS. 83 

learn nothing, and you cannot make them work vigor- 
ously " by the sole force of persuasion and soft words." 
Therefore a severe discipline has to be established, and 
this severity is incompatible with tenderness ; so that in 
order to preserve the affection of his children the father 
intrusts discipline to a. delegate. 

But if the objection to parental education is clear in 
Mill's case, so are its advantages, and especially the one 
inestimable advantage that the father was able to im- 
press himself on his son's mind and to live afterwards 
in his son's intellectual life. James Mill did not abdi- 
cate, as fathers generally do. He did not confine pa- 
ternal duties to the simple one of signing checks. And 
if it is not in our power to imitate him entirely, 
if we have not his profound and accurate knowledge, if 
we have not his marvellous patience, if it is not desir- 
able that we should take upon ourselves alone that 
immense responsibility which he accepted, may we not 
imitate him to such a degree as to secure some intel- 
lectual and moral influence over our own offspring and 
not leave them entirely to the teaching of the school- 
fellow (that most influential and most dangerous of all 
teachers), the pedagogue, and the priest? 

The only practical way in which this can be done is 
for the father to act within fixed limits. May he not 
reserve to himself some speciality? He can do this if 
he is himself master of some language or science that 
enters into the training of his son ; but here again cer- 
tain difficulties present themselves. 

By the one vigorous resolution to take the entire 
burden upon his own shoulders James Mill escaped 



84 FATHERS AND SONS. 

minor embarrassments. It is the partial education by 
the father that is difficult to carry out with steadiness 
and consistency. First, as to place of residence. If 
your son is far away during his months of work, and at 
home only for vacation pleasures, what, pray, is your 
hold upon him? He escapes from you in two direc- 
tions, by work and by play. I have seen a Highland 
gentleman who, to avoid this and do his duty to his sons, 
quitted a beautiful residence in magnificent scenery to 
go and live in the dull and ugly neighborhood of Rugby. 
It is not convenient or possible for every father to make 
the same sacrifice, but if you are able to do it other 
difficulties remain. Any speciality that you ma} T choose 
will be regarded by } T our son as a trifling and unimpor- 
tant accomplishment in comparison with Greek and 
Latin, because that is the school estimate ; and if you 
choose either Greek or Latin }"our scholarship will be 
immediately pitted against the scholarship of profes- 
sional teachers whose more recent and more perfect 
methods will place you in a position of inferiority, 
instantly perceived by 3 T our pupil, who will estimate you 
accordingly. The only two cases I have ever person- 
ally known in which a father taught the classical lan- 
guages failed in the object of increasing the son's 
affection and respect, because, although the father had 
been quite a first-rate scholar in his time, his ways of 
teaching were not so economical of effort as are the 
professional ways ; and the boys perceived that they 
were not taking the shortest cut to a degree. 

If, to avoid this comparison, you choose something 
outside the school curriculum, the boy will probably 






' FATHERS AND SONS. 85 

consider it an unfair addition to the burden of his work. 
His view of education is not jour view. You think it 
a valuable training or acquirement ; he considers it all 
task- work, like the making of bricks in Egypt ; and his 
notion of justice is that he ought not to be compelled 
to make more bricks than his class-fellows, who are 
happy in having fathers too indolent or too ignorant to 
trouble them. If, therefore, you teach him something 
outside of what his school- fellows do, he does not think, 
" I get the advantage of a wider education than theirs ; " 
but he thinks, " My father hrys an imposition upon me, 
and my school-fellows are luck}' to escape it." 

In some instances the father chooses a modern lan- 
guage as the thing that he will teach ; but he finds that 
as he cannot apply the school discipline (too harsh and 
unpaternal for use at home), there is a quiet, passive 
resistance that will ultimately defeat him unless he has 
inexhaustible patience. He decrees, let us suppose, 
that French shall be spoken at table ; but the chief 
effect of his decree is to reveal great and unsuspected 
powers of taciturnity. Who could be such a t}-rant as 
to find fault with a boy because he so modestly chooses 
to be silent? Speech may be of silver, but silence is 
of gold, and it is especially beautiful and becoming in 
the young. 

Seeing that everything in the way of intellectual 
training is looked upon by boys as an unfair addition to 
school-work, some fathers abandon that altogether, and 
try to win influence over their sons by initiating them 
into sports and pastimes. Just at first these happy 
projects appear to unite the useful with the agreeable ; 



SQ FATHERS AND SONS. 

but as the j-outliful nature is much better fitted for 
sports and pastimes than middle-age can pretend to be, 
it follows that the pupil very soon excels the master in 
these things, and quite gets the upper hand of him and 
offers him advice, or else dutifully (but with visible 
constraint) condescends to accommodate himself to 
the elder man's inferiority ; so that perhaps upon the 
whole it may be that sports and pastimes are not the 
field of exertion in which paternal authority is most 
likely to preserve a dignified preponderance. 

It is complacently assumed by men of fifty that over- 
ripe maturity is the superior of adolescence ; but an 
impartial balance of advantages shows that some very 
brilliant ones are on the *side of youth. At fifty we 
ma} T be wiser, richer, more famous than a clever bo} T ; 
but he does not care much for our wisdom, he thinks 
that expenses are a matter of course, and our little 
rushlights of reputations are as nothing to the future 
electric illumination of his own. In bodily activity we 
are to boyhood what a domestic cow is to a wild ante- 
lope ; and as boys rightly attach an immense value to 
such activity they generally look upon us, in their 
secret thoughts, as miserable old "muffs." I distinctly 
remember, when a boy, accompanying a middle-aged 
gentleman to a country railway station. We were a 
little late, and the distance was long, but my companion 
could not be induced to go bej'ond his regular pace. 
At last we were within half a mile, and the steam of 
the locomotive became visible. "Now let us run for 
it," I cried, " and we shall catch the train! " Run? — 
he run, indeed ! I might as well have asked the Pope 



- FATHERS AND SONS. 87 

to run in the streets of Eome ! My friend kept in 
silent solemnity to his own dignified method of motion, 
and we were left behind. To this clay I well remember 
the feelings of contemptuous pity and disgust that filled 
me as I looked upon that most respectable gentleman. 
I said not a word ; my demeanor was outwardly deco- 
rous ; but in my secret heart I despised nry unequal 
companion with the unmitigated contempt of youth. 

Even those physical exertions that elderly men are 
equal to — the ten miles' walk, the ride on a docile 
hunter, the quiet drive or sail — are so much below the 
achievements of fieiy 3'outh that they bring us no more 
credit than sitting in a chair. Though our efforts seem 
so respectable to ourselves that we take a modest pride 
therein, a young man can only look upon them with 
indulgence. 

In the mental powers elderly men are inferior on the 
very point that a } T oung man looks to first. His notion 
of cleverness, by which he estimates all his comrades, 
is not depth of thought, nor wisdom, nor sagacity ; it is 
simply rapidity in learning, and there his elders are 
hopelessly behind him. They may extend or deepen 
an old stud} T , but the}' cannot attack a new one with 
the conquering spirit of youth. Too late! too late! 
too late! is inscribed, for them, on a hundred gates of 
knowledge. The young man, with his powers of ac- 
quisition urging him like unsatisfied appetites, sees the 
gates all open and believes they are open for him. He 
believes all knowledge to be his possible province, 
knowing not yet the chilling, disheartening truth that 
life is too short for success in any but a very few 



88 FATHERS AND SONS. 

directions. Confident in his powers, the young man 
prepares himself for difficult examinations, and he 
knows that we should be incapable of the same efforts. 

Not having succeeded very well with attempts to 
create intercourse through studies and amusements, 
the father next consoles himself with the idea that he 
will convert his son into an intimate friend ; but shortly 
discovers that there are certain difficulties, of which a 
few ma}* be mentioned here. 

Although the relationship between father and son is 
a very near relationship, it ma} T happen that there is but 
little likeness of inherited idiosyncrasy, and therefore 
that the two may have different and even opposite 
tastes. By the law or accident of atavism a boy may 
resemble one of his grandfathers or some remoter ances- 
tor, or he may puzzle theorists about heredity by char- 
acteristics for which there is no known precedent in his 
family. Both his mental instincts and processes, and 
the conclusions to which the} r lead him, may be entirely 
different from the habits and conclusions of his father ; 
and if the father is so utterly unphilosophical as to sup- 
pose (what vulgar fathers constantly do suppose) that 
his own mental habits and conclusions are the right 
ones, and all others wrong, then he will adopt a tone 
of authority towards his son, on certain occasions, 
which the young man will excusably consider unbeara- 
able and which he will avoid by shunning the paternal 
society. Even a very mild attempt on the father's part 
to impose his own tastes and opinions will be quietly 
resented and felt as a reason for avoiding him, because 
the son is well aware that he cannot argue on equal 



.FATHERS AND SONS. 89 

terms with a man who, however amiable he chooses to 
be for the moment, can at any time arm himself with 
the formidable paternal dignity b} T simply taking the 
trouble to assume it. 

The mere difference of age is almost an insuperable 
barrier to comradeship ; for though a middle-aged man 
may be cheerful, his cheerfulness is u as water unto 
wine" in comparison with the merriment of joyous 
youth. So exuberant is that j T outhful gayety that it 
often needs to utter downright nonsense for the relief 
of its own high spirits, and feels oppressed in sober 
society where nonsense is not permitted. Any elderly 
gentleman who reads this has only to consult his own 
recollections, and ask himself whether in youth he did 
not often say and do utterly irrational things. If he 
never did, he never was really young. I hardly know 
any author, except Shakspeare, who has ventured to 
reproduce, in its perfect absurdity, the full flow of 
3 r outhful nonsense. The criticism of our own age would 
scarcely tolerate it in books, and might accuse the 
author himself of being silly ; but the thing still exists 
abundantly in real life, and the wonder is that it is 
sometimes the most intelligent young men who enjoy 
the most witless nonsense of all. When we have lost 
the high spirits that gave it a relish, it becomes very 
wearisome if prolonged. Young men instinctively 
know that we are past the appreciation of it. 

Another very important reason wh} T fathers and sons 
have a difficulty in maintaining close friendships is the 
steady divergence of their experience. 

In childhood, the father's knowledge of places, 



90 FATHERS AND SONS. 

people, and things includes the child's knowledge, as 
a large circle includes a little one drawn within it. 
Afterwards the boy goes to school, and has comrades 
and masters whom his father does not personally know. 
Later on, he visits many places where his father has 
never been. 

The son's life may socially diverge so completely 
from that of the father that he may realty come to 
belong to a different class in society. His education, 
habits, and associates may be different from those of 
his father. If the family is growing richer they are 
likely to be (in the worldly sense) of a higher class ; 
if it is becoming poorer they will probably be of a 
lower class than the father was accustomed to in his 
3 T outh. The son may feel more at ease than his father 
does in very refined society, or, on the other hand, he 
may feel refined society to be a restraint, whilst he only 
enjoys himself thoroughly and heartily amongst vulgar 
people that his father would carefully avoid. 

Divergence is carried to its utmost b} T difference of 
professional training, and by the professional habit of 
seeing things that follows from it. If a clergyman puts 
his son into a solicitor's office, he need not expect that 
the son will long retain those views of the world that 
prevail in the country parsonage where he was born. 
He will acquire other views, other mental habits, and 
he will very soon believe himself to possess a far greater 
and more accurate knowledge of mankind, and of af- 
fairs, than his father ever possessed. 

Even if the son is in the father's own profession he 
will have new views of it derived from the time at 



FATHERS AND SONS. 91 

which he learns it, and he is likely to consider his 
father's ideas as not brought down to the latest date. 
He will also have a tendency to look to strangers as 
greater authorities than his father, even when they are 
really on the same level, because they are not lowered 
in his estimate by domestic intimacy and familiarity. 
Their opinion will be especially valued by the young 
man if it has to be paid for, it being an immense de- 
preciation of the paternal counsel that it is alwa}^s 
given gratuitously. 

If the father has bestowed upon his son what is con- 
sidered a " complete" education, and if he himself has 
not received the same ' ' complete " education in his 
3'outh, the son is likely to accept the conventional esti- 
mate of education because it is in his own favor, and 
to estimate his father as an "uneducated" or a " half- 
educated" man, without taking into much account the 
possibility that his father may have developed his fac- 
ulties by mental labor in other ways. The conven- 
tional division between "educated" and "uneducated" 
men is so definite that it is easily seen. The educated 
are those who have taken a degree at one of the Uni- 
versities ; the rest are uneducated, whatever may be 
their attainments in the sciences, in modern languages, 
or in the fine arts. 

There are differences of education even more serious 
than this, because more real. A man may be not only 
conventionally uneducated, but he may be really and 
truly uneducated, by which I mean that his faculties 
may never have been drawn out by intellectual discipline 
of any kind whatever. It is hard indeed for a well- 



92 FATHERS AND SONS. 

educated young man to live under the authority of a 
father of that kind, because he has constantly to sup- 
press reasons and motives for opinions and decisions 
that such a father could not possibly enter into or un- 
derstand. The relationship is equally hard for the 
father, who must be aware, with the lively suspicion of 
the ignorant, that his son is not telling him all his 
thought but only the portion of it which he thinks fit 
to reveal, and that much more is kept in reserve. He 
will ask, " Why this reserve towards met " and then he 
will either be profoundly hurt and grieved by it at times, 
or else, if of another temper, he will be irritated, and 
his irritation may find harsh utterance in words. 

An educated man can never rid himself of his educa- 
tion. His views of the most ordinal things are differ- 
ent from the views of the uneducated. If he were to 
express them in his own language the}" would say, 
" Wiry, how he talks!" and consider him "a queer 
chap ; " and if he keeps them to himself they say he is 
very " close" and " shut up." There is no way out of 
the dilemma except this, that kind and tender feelings 
ma} T exist between people who have nothing in common 
intellectual!}-, but these are only possible when all pre- 
tence to paternal authority is abandoned. 

Our forefathers had an idea with regard to the opin- 
ions of their children that in these da}~s we must be 
content to give up. They thought that all opinions 
were by nature hereditary, and it was considered an act 
of disloyalt} T to ancestors if a descendant ventured to 
differ from them. The profession of any but the family 
opinions was so rare as to be almost inconceivable ; and 



FATHERS AND SONS. 93 

if in some great crisis the head of a family took a new 
departure in religion or politics the new faith substituted 
itself for the old one as the hereditary faith of the family. 
I remember hearing an old gentleman (who represented 
old English feeling in great perfection) say that it was 
totally unintelligible to him that a certain Member of 
Parliament could sit on the Liberal side of the House of 
Commons. ' ' I cannot understand it," he said j " I knew 
his father intimately, and he was alwa}'S a good Toiy." 
The idea that the son might have opinions of his own 
was unthinkable. 

In our time we are beginning to perceive that opin- 
ions cannot be imposed, and that the utmost that can be 
obtained by brow-beating a son who differs from our- 
selves is that he shall make false professions to satisfy 
us. Paternal influence may be better employed than 
in encouraging habits of dissimulation. 

M. Legouve attaches great importance to the relig- 
ious question as a cause of division between fathers 
and sons because in the present day 3'oung men so fre- 
quently imbibe opinions which are not those of their 
parents. It is not uncommon, in France, for Catholic 
parents to have unbelieving sons ; and the converse is 
also seen, but more frequently in the case of daughters. 
As opinions are very freely expressed in France (except 
where external conformit} 7 is an affair of caste), we find 
many families in which Catholicism and Agnosticism 
have each their open and convinced adherents ; 3'et 
famil} T affection does not appear to suffer from the dif- 
ference, or is, at least, powerful enough to overcome it. 
In old times this would have been impossible. The 



94 FATHERS AND SONS. 

father would have resented a difference of opinion in the 
son as an offence against himself. 

A very common cause of division between father and 
son, in old times, was the following. 

The father expressed a desire of some kind, mildly 
and kindly perhaps, yet with the full expectation that 
it should be attended to ; but the desire was of an 
exorbitant nature, in this sense, that it involved some- 
thing that would affect the whole course of the young 
man's future life in a manner contraiy to his natural 
instincts. The father was then grievously hurt and 
offended because the son did not see his way to the 
fulfilment of the paternal desire. 

The strongest cases of this kind were in relation to 
profession and marriage. The father wished his son 
to enter into some trade or profession for which he was 
completely unsuited, or he desired him to marry some 
young lady for whom he had not the slightest natural 
afnnhy. The son felt the inherent difficulties and re- 
fused. Then the father thought, " I only ask of my son 
this one simple thing, and he denies me." 

In these cases the father was not asking for one 
thing, but for thousands of things. He was asking his 
son to undertake msmy thousands of separate obliga- 
tions, succeeding each other till the far-distant date of 
his retirement from the distasteful profession, or his 
release, hj his own death or hers, from the tedious 
companionship of the unloved wife. Sometimes the 
concession would have involved a long series of Irvpoc- 
risies, as for example when a son was asked to take 
holy orders, though with little faith and no vocation. 



FATHERS AND SONS. 95 

Peter the Great is the most conspicuous example in 
history of a father whose idiosyncrasy was not con- 
tinued in his son, and who could not understand or tol- 
erate the separateness of his son's personalit}'. They 
were not only of independent, but even of opposite 
natures. "Peter was active, curious, and energetic. 
Alexis was contemplative and reflective. He was not 
without intellectual ability, but he liked a quiet life. 
He preferred reading and thinking. At the age when 
Peter was making fireworks, building boats, and exer- 
cising his comrades in mimic war, Alexis was ponder- 
ing over the ' Divine Manna,' reading the ' Wonders 
of God,' reflecting on Thomas a Kempis's 'Imitation 
of Christ,' and making excerpts from Baronius. While 
it sometimes seemed as if Peter was born too soon for 
the age, Alexis was born too late. He belonged to the 
past generation. Not only did he take no interest in 
the work and plans of his father, but he gradually came 
to dislike and hate them. . . . He would sometimes 
even take medicine to make himself ill, so that he 
might not be called upon to perform duties or to attend 
to business. Once, when he was obliged to go to the 
launch of a ship, he said to a friend, ' I would rather 
be a galley-slave, or have a burning fever, than be 
obliged to go there.' " * 

In this case one is sorry for both father and son. 
Peter was a great intelligent barbarian of immense 
muscular strength and rude cerebral energy. Alexis 
was of the material from which civilization makes 
priests and students, or quiet conventional kings, but 
1 Schuyler's " Peter the Great." 



96 FATHERS AND SONS. 

he was even more unlike Peter than gentle Richard 
Cromwell was unlike authoritative Oliver. The dis- 
appointment to Peter, firmly convinced, as all rude 
natures are, of the perfection of his own personality, 
and probably quite unable to appreciate a personality 
of another t3 T pe, must have been the more bitter that 
his great plans for the future required a vigorous, prac- 
tically minded innovator like himself. At length the 
difference of nature so exasperated the Autocrat that 
he had his son three times tortured, the third time in his 
own presence and with a fatal result. This terrible inci- 
dent is the strongest expression known to us of a father's 
vexation because his son was not of his own kind. 

Another painful case that will be long remembered, 
though the character of the father is less known to us, 
is that of the poet Shelley and Sir Timothy. The little 
that we do know amounts to this, that there was a 
total absence of sympathy. Sir Timothy committed 
the very greatest of paternal mistakes in depriving 
himself of the means of direct influence over his son 
by excluding him from his own home. Considering 
that the supreme grief of unhappy fathers is the feeble- 
ness of their influence over their sons, they can but 
confirm and complete their sorrow by annihilating that 
influence utterly and depriving themselves of all chance 
of recovering and increasing it in the future. This Sir 
Timothy did after the expulsion from Oxford. In his 
position, a father possessing some skill and tact in the 
management of young men at the most difficult and 
wayward period of their lives would have determined 
above all things to keep his son as much as possible 



FATHERS AND SONS. 97 

within the range of his own control. Although Shelley 
afterwards returned to Field Place for a short time, the 
scission had been made ; there was an end of real inter- 
course between father and son ; the poet went his own 
way, married Harriett Westbrook, and lived through 
the rest of his short, unsatisfactory existence as a home- 
less, wandering declasse. 

This Essay has hitherto run upon the discouraging 
side of the subject, so that it ought not to end without 
the happier and more hopeful considerations. 

Every personality is separate from others, and ex- 
pects its separateness to be acknowledged. When a 
son avoids his father it is because he fears that the 
rights of his own personality will be disregarded. 
There are fathers who habitually treat their sons with 
sneering contempt. I have myself seen a young man 
of fair common abilities treated with constant and un- 
disguised contempt by a clever, sardonic father who 
went so far as to make brutal allusions to the shape 
of the young man's skull ! He bore this treatment 
with admirable patience and unfailing gentleness, but 
suffered from it silently. Another used to laugh at his 
son, and called him "Don Quixote" whenever the lad 
gave expression to some sentiment above the low Phil- 
istine level. A third, whom I knew well, had a dis- 
agreeable way of putting down his son because he was 
young, telling him that up to the age of forty a man 
" might have impressions, but could not possibly have 
opinions." " My father," said a kind-hearted English 
gentleman to me, " was the most thoroughly unbearable 
person I ever met with in my life." 

7 



98 FATHERS AND SONS. 

The frank recognition of separate personality, with 
all its rights, would stop this brutality at once. There 
still remains the legitimate power of the father, which 
he ought not to abdicate, and which is of itself enough 
to prevent the freedom and equalit} T necessarj^ to per- 
fect friendship. This reason, and the difference of age 
and habits, make it impossible that young men and 
their fathers should be comrades ; but a relation may 
be established between them which, if rightly under- 
stood, is one of the most agreeable in human existence. 

To be satisfactory it must be founded, on the father's 
side, on the idea that he is repaying to posterity what 
he has received from his own parents, and not on any 
selfish hope that the descending stream of benefit will 
flow upwards again to him. Then he must not count 
upon affection, nor lay himself out to win it, nor be 
timidly afraid of losing it, but found his influence upon 
the firmer ground of respect, and be determined to de- 
serve and have that, along with as much unforced affec- 
tion as the son is able naturally and easily to give. It is 
not desirable that the affection between father and son 
should be so tender, on either side, as to make separa- 
tion a constant pain, for such is human destiny that the 
two are generally fated to see but little of each other. 

The best satisfaction for a father is to deserve and 
receive loyal and unfailing respect from his son. 

No, this is not quite the best, not quite the supreme 
satisfaction of paterntfy. Shall I reveal the secret that 
lies in silence at the very bottom of the hearts of all 
worthy and honorable fathers ? Their profoundest hap- 
piness is to be able themselves to respect their sons. 



THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 



ESSAY VII. 

THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 

TF hospitality were always perfectly practised it would 
-*• be the strongest of all influences in favor of ra- 
tional liberty, because the host would learn to respect 
it in the persons of his guests, and thence, by exten- 
sion of habit, amongst others who could never be his 
guests. 

Hospitality educates us in respect for the rights of 
others. This is the substantial benefit that the host 
ought to derive from his trouble and his outla}< , but the 
instincts of uncivilized human nature are so powerful 
that this education has usually been partial and incom- 
plete. The best part of it has been systematically 
evaded, in this way. People were aware that tolerance 
and forbearance ought to be exercised towards guests, 
and so, to avoid the hard necessity of exercising these 
qualities when they were really difficult virtues, they 
practised what is called exclusiveness. In other words, 
they accepted as guests only those who agreed with 
their own opinions and belonged to their own class. 
By this arrangement they could be both hospitable and 
intolerant at the same time. 

If, in our day, the barrier of exclusiveness has been 
in many places broken down, there is all the greater 
need for us to remember the true principle of hospital- 



100 THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 

ity. It might be forgotten with little inconvenience in 
a very exclusive society, but if it were forgotten in a 
society that is not exclusive the consequences would be 
exactly the opposite of what every friend of civilization 
most earnestly desires. Social intercourse, in that case, 
so far from being an education in respect for the rights 
of others, would be an opportunity for violating them. 
The violation might become habitual ; and if it were so 
this strange result would follow, that society would not 
be a softening and civilizing influence, but the contrary. 
It would accustom people to treat each other with 
disregard, so that men would be hardened and brutal- 
ized by it as schoolboj^s are made ruder by the rough 
habits of the playground, and urbanity would not 
be cultivated in cities, but preserved, if at all, in 
solitude. 

The two views concerning the rights of the guest may 
be stated briefly as follows : — 

1. The guest is bound to conform in all things to the 
tastes and customs of his host. He ought to find or 
feign enjoyment in everjining that his host imposes 
upon him ; and if he is unwilling to do this in every 
particular it is a breach of good manners on his part, 
and he must be made to suffer for it. 

2. The guest should be left to be happy in his own 
way, and the business of the host is to arrange things 
in such a manner that each guest may enjoy as much 
as possible his own peculiar kind of happiness. 

When the first principle was applied in all its rigor, 
as it often used to be applied, and as I have myself 
seen it applied, the sensation experienced by the guest 



THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 101 

on going to stay in certain houses was that of entirely 
losing the direction of himself. He was not even 
allowed, in the middle classes, to have any control over 
his own inside, but had to eat what his host ordered 
him to eat, and to drink the quantity of wine and spirits 
that his host had decided to be good for him. Besist- 
ance to these dictates was taken as an offence, as a 
crime against good fellowship, or as a reflection on the 
quality of the good things provided ; and conversation 
paused whilst the attention of the whole company was 
attracted to the recalcitrant guest, who was intention- 
ally placed in a situation of extreme anno} T ance and 
discomfort in order to compel him to obedience. The 
victim was perhaps half an invalid, or at least a man 
who could only keep well and happy on condition of 
observing a certain strictness of regimen. He was 
then laughed at for idle fears about his health, told that 
he was a hypochondriac, and recommended to drink a 
bottle of port every day to get rid of such idle non- 
sense. If he declined to eat twice or three times as 
much as he desired, the hostess expressed her bitter 
regret that she had not been able to provide food and 
cookery to his taste, thus placing him in such a position 
that he must either eat more or seem to condemn her 
arrangements. It was very common amongst old- 
fashioned French bourgeois in the last generation for 
the hostess herself to heap things on the guest's plate, 
and to prevent this her poor persecuted neighbor had 
to remove the plate or turn it upside down. The 
whole habit of pressing was dictated by selfish feeling 
in the hosts. They desired to see their guests devour 



102 THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 

voraciously, in order that their own vanity might be 
gratified by the seeming appreciation of their things. 
Temperate men were disliked by a generation of topers 
because their temperance had the appearance of a silent 
protest or censure. The discomfort inflicted by these 
odious usages was so great that man} 7 people either 
injured their health in society or kept out of it in self- 
defence, though they were not sulky and unsociable b} r 
nature, but would have been hearty lovers of human 
intercourse if they could have enjoj'ed it on less unac- 
ceptable terms. 

The wholesome modern reaction against these dread- 
ful old customs has led some hosts into another error. 
The}' sometimes fail to understand the great principle 
that it is the guest alone who ought to be the judge 
of the quantit} 7 that he shall eat and drink. The 
old pressing hospitality assumed that the guest was a 
child, too shame-faced to take what it longed for unless 
it was vigorously encouraged ; but the new hospitality, 
if indeed it still in every case deserves that honored 
name, does realty sometimes appear to assume (I do 
not say always, or often, but in extreme cases) that 
the guest is a fool, who would eat and drink more than 
is good for him if he were not carefully rationed. Such 
hosts forget that excess is quite a relative term, that 
each constitution has its own needs. Beyond this, it 
is well known that the exhilaration of social intercourse 
enables people who meet convivialry to digest and 
assimilate, without fatigue, a larger amount of nutri- 
ment than they could in dull and perhaps dejected 
solitude. Hence it is a natural and long-established 



THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 103 

habit to eat and drink more when in company than 
alone, and the guest should have the possibility of 
conforming to this not irrational old custom until, in 
Homer's phrase, he has "put from him the desire of 
meat and drink." 

Guests have no right whatever to require that the 
host should himself eat and drink to keep them in 
countenance. There used to be a belief (it lingers still 
in the middle classes and in country places) that the 
laws of hospitality required the host to set what was 
considered " a good example," or, in other words, to 
commit excesses himself that his friends might not 
be too much ashamed of theirs. It is said that the 
Emperor William of Germany never eats in public at 
all, but sits out ever}' banquet before an empty plate. 
This, though quite excusable in an old gentleman, 
obliged to live by rule, must have rather a chilling 
effect ; and yet I like it as a declaration of the one 
great principle that no person at table, be he host or 
guest, ought to be compelled to inflict the very slightest 
injuiy upon his own health, or even comfort. The ra- 
tional and civilized idea is that food and wines are 
simply placed at the disposal of the people present to 
be used, or abstained from, as the}' please. 

It is clear that every invited guest has a right to 
expect some slight appearance of festivit} T in his honor. 
In coarse and barbarous times the idea of festivit} T is 
invariably expressed by abundance, especially by vast 
quantities of butcher's meat and wine, as we alwa} r s 
find it in Homer, where princes and gentlemen stuff 
themselves like savages ; but in refined times the notion 



104 THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 

of quantity has lost its attraction, and that of elegance 
takes its place. In a highly civilized society nothing 
conveys so much the idea of festivity as plenty of 
light and flowers, with beautiful table-linen and plate 
and glass. These, with some extra delicacy in cook- 
ery and wines, are our modern way of expressing 
welcome. 

There is a certain kind of hospitality in which the 
host visibly declines to make any effort either of trouble 
or expense, but plainly shows by his negligence that 
he only tolerates the guest. All that can be said of 
such hospitality as this is that a guest who respects 
himself may endure it silently for once, but would not 
be likely to expose himself to it a second time. 

There is even a kind of hospitality which seems to 
find a satisfaction in letting the guest perceive that the 
best in the house is not offered to him. He is lodged 
in a poor little room, when there are noble bedchambers, 
unused, in the same house ; or he is allowed to hire 
a vehicle in the village, to make some excursion, when 
there are horses in the stables plethoric from want of 
exercise. In cases of this kind it is not the privation 
of luxury that is hard to bear, but the indisposition to 
give honor. The guest feels and knows that if a per- 
son of vety high rank came to the house everything 
would be put at his disposal, and he resents the slight 
put upon his own condition. A rich English lady, 
long since dead, had a large mansion in the country 
with fine bedrooms ; so she found a pleasure in keeping 
those rooms empty and sending guests to sleep at the 
top of the house in little bare and comfortless chambers 



THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 105 

that the architect had intended for servants. I have 
heard of a French house where there are fine state 
apartments, and where all ordinary guests are poorly 
lodged, and fed in a miserable salle a manger. An 
aggravation is when the host treats himself better than 
his guest. Lady B. invited some friends to a country- 
house ; and they drove to another country-house in the 
neighborhood in two carriages, one containing Lady B. 
and one friend, the other the remaining guests. Her 
ladyship was timid and rather selfish, as timid people 
often are ; so when they reached the avenue she began 
to fancy that both carriages could not safely turn in the 
garden, and she despatched her footman to the second 
carriage, with orders that her guests (amongst whom 
was a lady ver} 7 near her confinement) were to get 
out and walk to the house, whilst she drove up to the 
door in state. 

A guest has an absolute right to have his religious 
and political opinions respected in his presence, and 
this is not invariably done. The rule more generally 
followed seems to be that class opinions only deserve 
respect and not individual opinions. The question is 
too large to be treated in a paragraph, but I should say 
that it is a clear breach of hospitality to utter anything 
in disparagement of any opinion whatever that is known 
to be held by any one guest present, however humble 
may be his rank. I have sometimes seen the known 
opinions of a guest attacked rudely and directly, but 
the more civilized method is to do it more artfully 
through some other person who is not present. For 
example, a guest is known to think, on important 



106 THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 

subjects, very much as Mr. Herbert Spencer does ; then 
the host will contrive to talk at him in talking about 
Spencer. A guest ought not to bear this ungenerous 
kind of attack. If such an occasion arises he should 
declare his opinions plainly and with firmness, and 
show his determination to have them respected whilst 
he is there, whatever may be said against them in his 
absence. If he cannot obtain this degree of courtesy, 
which is his right, let him quit the house and satisfy his 
hunger at some inn. The innkeeper will ask for a little 
money, but he demands no mental submission. 

It sometimes happens that the nationality of a foreign 
guest is not respected as it ought to be. I remember 
an example of this which is moderate enough to serve 
as a kind of tj^pe, some attacks upon nationality being 
much more direct and outrageous. An English lady 
said at her own table that she would not allow her 
daughter to be partially educated in a French school, 
4 'because she would have to associate with French girls, 
which, you know, is undesirable." Amongst the guests 
was a French lady, and the observation was loud enough 
for everybody to hear it. I say nothing of the injustice 
of the imputation. It was, indeed, most unjust, but 
that is not the point. The point is that a foreigner 
ought not to hear attacks upon his native land even 
when they are perfectly well founded. 

The host has a sort of judicial function in this way. 
The guest has a right to look to him for protection on 
certain occasions, and he is likely to be profoundly 
grateful when it is given with tact and skill, because 
the host can say things for him that he cannot even 



THE' RIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 107 

hint at for himself. Suppose the case of a young man 
who is treated with easy and rather contemptuous famil- 
iarity by another guest, simply on account of his }^outh. 
He is nettled by the offence, but as it is more in manner 
than in words he cannot fix upon anything to answer. 
The host perceives his annoyance, and kindly gives him 
some degree of importance by alluding to some superi- 
ority of his, and by treating him in a manner very 
different from that which had vexed him. 

A witty host is the most powerful ally against an 
aggressor. I remember dining in a very well-known 
house in Paris where a celebrated Frenchman repeated 
the absurd old French calumny against English ladies, 
■ — that they all drink. I was going to resent this seri- 
ously when a clever Frenchwoman (who knew England 
well) perceived the danger, and answered the man her- 
self with great decision and ability. I then watched 
for the first opportunity of making him ridiculous, and 
seized upon a very delightful one that he unwittingly 
offered. Our host at once understood that my attack 
was in revenge for an aggression that had been in bad 
taste, and he supported me with a wit and pertinacity 
that produced general merriment at the enemy's expense. 
Now in that case I should say that the host was filling 
one of the most important and most difficult functions 
of a host. 

This Essay has hitherto been written almost entirely 
on the guest's side of the question, so that we have 
still briefly to consider the limitations to his rights. 

He has no right to impose any serious inconvenience 
upon his host. He has no right to disturb the ordinary 



108 THE EIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 

arrangements of the house, or to inflict any serious 
pecuniary cost, or to occupy the host's time to the 
prejudice of his usual pursuits. He has no right to 
intrude upon the privacy of his host. 

A guest has no right to place the host in such a 
dilemma that he must either commit a rudeness or put 
up with an imposition. The very courtesy of an enter- 
tainer places him at the mercy of a pushing and unscru- 
pulous guest, and it is only when the provocation has 
reached such a point as to have become perfectly in- 
tolerable that a host will do anything so painful to 
himself as to abandon his hospitable character and 
make the guest understand that he must go. 

It may be said that difficulties of this kind never 
occur in civilized societ}^. No doubt they are rare, but 
they happen just sufficiently often to make it necessary 
to be prepared for them. Suppose the case of a guest 
who exceeds his invitation. He has been invited for 
two nights, plainly and definitely ; but he stays a third, 
fourth, fifth, and seems as if he would stay forever. 
There are men of that kind in the world, and it is one 
of their arts to disarm their victims by pleasantness, so 
that it is not easy to be firm with them. The lady of 
the house gives a gentle hint, the master follows with 
broader hints, but the intruder is quite impervious to 
any but the very plainest language. At last the host 
has to sa3 T , " Your train leaves at such an hour, and the 
carriage will be ready to take you to the station half 
an hour earlier." This, at any rate, is intelligible ; 
and yet I have known one of those clinging limpets 
whom even this proceeding failed to dislodge. At the 



THE' RIGHTS OF THE GUEST. 109 

approach of the appointed hour' he was nowhere to be 
found ! He had gone to hide himself in a wood with 
no companion but his watch, and by its help he took 
care to return when it was too late. That is some- 
times one of the great uses of a watch. 



110 THE DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP. 



ESSAY VIII. 

THE DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP. 

A SAD subject, but worth analysis ; for if friendship 
-*■ -*■ is of any value to us whilst it is alive, is it not 
worth while to inquire if there are an} 7 means of keeping 
it alive? 

The word "death" is correctly employed here, for 
nobody has discovered the means b} r which a dead 
friendship can be resuscitated. To hope for that would 
be vain indeed, and idle the waste of thought in such 
a bootless quest. 

Shall we mourn over this death without hope, this 
blank annihilation, this finis of intercourse once so 
sweet, this dreary and ultimate conclusion ? 

The death of a friendship is not the death of a per- 
son ; we do not mourn for the absence of some beloved 
person from the world. It is simply the termination 
of a certain degree and kind of intercourse, not of 
necessity the termination of all intercourse. We may 
be grieved that the change has come ; we may be re- 
morseful if it has come through a fault of our own ; but 
if it is clue simply to natural causes there is small place 
for any reasonable sorrow. 

Friendship is a certain rapport between two minds 
during one or more phases of their existence, and the 
perfection of it is quite as dependent upon what is not 



THE- DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP. Ill 

in the two minds as upon their positive acquirements 
and possessions. Hence the extreme facility with 
which schoolboys form friendships which, for the time, 
are real" true, and delightful. School friendships are 
formed so easily because boys in the same class know 
the same things ; and it rarety happens that in addition 
to what they have in common either one party or the 
other has any knowledge of importance that is not 
in common. 

Later in life the pair of friends who were once com- 
rades go into different professions that fill the mind 
with special professional ideas and induce different 
habits of thought. Each will be conscious, when they 
meet, that there is a great range of ideas in the other's 
mind from which he is excluded, and each will have a 
difficulty in keeping within the smaller range of ideas 
that they have now in common ; so that they will no 
longer be able to let their whole minds play together as 
they used to do, and they will probably feel more at 
ease with mere acquaintances who have what is now 
their knowledge, what are now their mental habits, 
than with the friend of their boyhood who is without 
them. 

This is strongly felt b}^ men who go through a large 
experience at a distance from their early home and then 
return for a while to the old place and old associates, 
and find that it is only a part of themselves that is 
acceptable. New growths of self have taken place in 
distant regions, by travel, by study, by intercourse 
with mankind ; and these new growths, though they 
may be more valuable than any others, are of no 



112 THE DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP. 

practical use, of no social availableness, in the little 
circle that has remained in the old ways. 

Then there are changes of temper that result from 
the fixing of the character by time. We think we re- 
main the same, but that is one of our many illusions. 
We change, and we do not alwaj^s change in the same 
way. One man becomes mellowed by advancing years, 
but another is hardened by them ; one man's temper 
gains in sweetness and serenity as his intellect gains 
in light, another becomes dogmatic, peremptory, and 
bitter. Even when the change is the same for both, it 
ma} 7- be unfavorable to their intercourse. Two merry 
young hearts may enjoy each other's company, when 
they would find each other dull and flat if the sparkle 
of the early effervescence were all spent. 

I have not yet touched upon change of opinion as a 
cause of the death of friendship, but it is one of the 
most common causes. It would be a calumny on the 
intelligence of the better part of mankind to say that 
they always desire to hear repeated exactly what they 
say themselves, though that is really the desire of the 
unintelligent ; but the cleverest people like to hear new 
and additional reasons in support of the opinions they 
hold already ; and they do not like to hear reasons, 
hitherto unsuspected, that go to the support of opin- 
ions different from their own. Therefore a slow diver- 
gence of opinion may carry two friends farther and 
farther apart by narrowing the subjects of their inter- 
course, or a sudden intellectual revolution in one of 
them may effect an immediate and irreparable breach. 

" If the character is formed," says Stuart Mill, "and 



THE DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP. 113 

the mind made up on the few cardinal points of human 
opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on these 
has been felt at all times to be an essential requisite 
of anything worthy the name of friendship in a really 
earnest mind." I do not quote this in the belief that 
it is absolutely true, but it expresses a general senti- 
ment. We can only be guided by our own experience 
in these matters. Mine has been that friendship is 
possible with those whom I respect, however widely 
they differ from me, and not possible with those whom 
I am unable to respect, even when on the great matters 
of opinion their views are identical with my own. 

It is certain, however, that the change of opinion 
itself has a tendency to separate men, even though the 
difference would not have made friendship impossible 
if it had existed from the first. Instances of this are 
often found in biographies, especially in religious biogra- 
phies, because religious people are more "pained" and 
"wounded" b} r difference of opinion than others. We 
read in such books of the profound distress with which 
the hero found himself separated from his early friends 
by his new conviction on this or that point of theology. 
Political divergence produces the same effect in a minor 
degree, and with more of irritation than distress. Even 
divergence of opinion on artistic subjects is enough to 
produce coolness. Artists and men of letters become 
estranged from each other by modifications of their 
critical doctrines. 

Differences of prosperity do not prevent the forma- 
tion of friendship if they have existed previously, and 
can be taken as established facts ; but if they widen 
8 



114 THE DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP. 

afterwards they have a tender^ to diminish it. They 
do so by altering the views of one of the parties about 
wa} T s of living and about the multitude of things involv- 
ing questions of expense. If the enriched man lives 
on a scale corresponding to his newly acquired wealth, 
he ma}' be regarded by the other as pretentious beyond 
his station, whilst if he keeps to his old style he may 
be thought parsimonious. From delicacy he will cease 
to talk to the other about his money matters, which he 
spoke of with frankness when he was not so rich. If 
he has social ambition he will form new alliances with 
richer men, and the old friend may regard these with a 
little unconscious jealousy. 

It has been observed that } T oung artists often have a 
great esteem for the work of one of their number so 
long as its qualities are not recognized and rewarded 
b}' the public, but that so soon as the clever young man 
wins the natural meed of industry and ability his early 
friendships die. They were often the result of a gener- 
ous indignation against public injustice, so when that 
injustice came to an end the kindness that was a protest 
against it ceased at the same time. In jealous natures 
it would no doubt be replaced by the conviction that 
public favor had rewarded merit far beyond its deserts. 

In the political life of democracies we see men en- 
thusiastically supported and really admired with sincer- 
ity so long as the}' remain in opposition, and their 
friends indulge the most favorable anticipations about 
what the}- would do if they came to power ; but when 
they accept office they soon lose many of these friends, 
who are quite sure to be disappointed with the small 



THE' DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP. 115 

degree in which their excessive hopes have been real- 
ized. There is no country where this is seen more 
frequently than in France, where Ministers are often 
criticised with the most unrelenting and uncharitable 
acerbity by the men and newspapers that helped to 
raise them. 

Changes of physical constitution may be the death ot 
friendship in this way. A friendship may be founded 
upon some sport that one of the parties becomes unable 
to follow. After that the two men cease to meet on the 
particularly pleasant occasions that every sport affords 
for its real votaries, and they only meet on common 
occasions, which are not the same because there is not 
the same jovial and heart}^ temper. In like manner a 
friendship may be weakened if one of the parties gives 
up some indulgence that both used to enjo}~ together. 
Many a friendship has been cemented by the habit of 
smoking, and weakened afterwards when one friend 
gave up the habit, declined the cigars that the other 
offered, and either did not accompany him to the 
smoking-room or sat there ^n open and vexatious 
nonconformity. 

It is well known, so well known indeed as scarcely 
to require mention here, that one of the most frequent 
and powerful causes of the death of bachelor friend- 
ships is marriage. One of the two friends takes a 
wife, and the friendship is at once in peril. The main- 
tenance of it depends upon the lady's taste and temper. 
If not quite approved by her, it will languish for a little 
while and then die, in spite of all painful and visible 
efforts on the husband's part to compensate, by extra 



116 THE DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP, 

attention, for the coolness of his wife. I have visited 
a Continental city where it is always understood that 
all bachelor friendships are broken off by marriage. 
This rule has at least the advantage of settling the 
question unequivocally. 

Simple neglect is probably the most common of all 
causes deadly to friendship, — neglect arising either from 
real indifference, from constitutional indolence, or from 
excessive devotion to business. Friendly feelings must 
be either of extraordinary sincerity, or else strengthened 
by some extraneous motive of self-interest, to surmount 
petty inconveniences. The verj^ slightest difficulty in 
maintaining intercourse is sufficient in most cases to 
insure its total cessation in a short time. Your house is 
somewhat difficult of access, — it is on a hill-side or at a 
little distance from a railway station : only the most 
sincere friends will be at the trouble to find you unless 
your rank is so high that it is a glory to visit you. 

Poor friends often keep up intercourse with rich ones 
by sheer force of determination long after it ought to 
have been allowed to die its own natural death. When 
they do this without having the courage to require 
some approach to reciprocity the} T sink into the con- 
dition of mere clients, whom the patron may indeed 
treat with apparent kindness, but whom he regards 
with real indifference, taking no trouble whatever to 
maintain the old connection between them. 

Equality of rank and fortune is not at all necessary 
to friendship, but a certain other kind of equality is. 
A real friendship can never be maintained unless there 
is an equal readiness on both sides to be at some pains 



THE DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP. 117 

and trouble for its maintenance ; so if you perceive that 
a person whom you once supposed to be your friend 
will not put himself to any trouble on your account, 
the only course consistent with your dignity is to take 
exactly the same amount of pains to make yourself 
agreeable to him. After you have done this for a little 
time you will soon know if the friendship is really 
dead ; for he is sure to perceive your neglect if he does 
not perceive his own, and he will either renew the 
intercourse with some empressement or else cease from 
it altogether. 

In early life the right rule is to accept kindness grate- 
fully from one's elders and not to be sensitive about 
omissions, because such omissions are then often con- 
sistent with the most real and affectionate regard ; but 
as a man advances towards middle-age it is right for 
him to be somewhat careful of his dignity and to re- 
quire from friends, whatever may be their station, a 
certain general reciprocity. This should always be 
understood in rather a large sense, and not exacted in 
trifles. If he perceives that there is no reciprocity he 
cannot do better than drop an acquaintance that is 
but the phantom and simulacrum of Friendship's living 
reality. 

It is as natural that many friendships should die and 
be replaced by others as that our old selves should be 
replaced by our present selves. The fact seems mel- 
ancholy when first perceived, but is afterwards accepted 
as inevitable. There is, however, a death of friendship 
which is so truly sad and sorrowful as to cast its gloomy 
shadow on all the years that remain to us. It is when 



118 THE DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP. 

we ourselves, by some unhappy fault of temper that 
might have been easily avoided, have wounded the 
kind breast of our friend, and killed the gentle senti- 
ment that was dwelling happily within. The only way 
to be quite sure of avoiding this great and irretrievable 
calamity is to remember how very delicate friendly 
sentiments are and how easy it is to destroy them by 
an inconsiderate or an ungentle word. 



THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 119 



ESSAY IX. 

THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 

"\T7E become richer or poorer; we seldom remain 
» » exactly as we were. If we have property, it 
increases or diminishes in value ; if our income is fixed, 
the value of money alters ; and if it increased propor- 
tionally to the depreciation of money, our position 
would still be relatively altered by changes in the for- 
tunes of others. We marry and have children ; then 
our wealth becomes less our own after every birth. 
We win some honor or professional advancement that 
seems a gain; but increased expenditure is the conse- 
quence, and we are poorer than we were before. Amidst 
all these fluctuations of wealth human intercourse either 
continues under altered conditions or else it is broken 
off because they are no longer favorable to its mainten- 
ance. I propose to consider, very briefly, how these 
altered conditions operate. 

We have to separate, in the first place, intercourse 
between individuals from intercourse between families. 
The distinction is of the utmost importance, because 
the two are not under^the same law. 

Two men, of whom one is extremely rich and the 
other almost penniless, have no difficulty in associating 
together on terms agreeable to both when they possess 
intellectual interests in common, or even when there is 



120 THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 

nothing more than an attraction of idiosyncrasy ; but 
these conditions only subsist between one individual 
and another ; they are not likely to subsist between two 
families. Intercourse between individuals depends on 
something in intellect and culture that enables them to 
understand each other, and upon something in char- 
acter that makes them love or respect each other. 
Intercourse between families depends chiefly on neigh- 
borhood and similarity in style of living. 

This is the reason why bachelors have so much easier 
access to society than men with wives and families. 
The bachelor is received for himself, for his genius, 
information, manners ; but if he is married the question 
is, "What sort of people are they?" This, being 
interpreted, means, "What style do they live in?" 
"How many servants do they keep?" 

Whatever may be the variety of opinions concerning 
the doctrines of the Church of Rome, there is but one 
concerning her astuteness. There can be no doubt 
that she is the most influential association of men that 
has ever existed ; and she has decided for celibacy, that 
the priest might stand on his merits and on the power 
of the Church, and be respected and admitted every- 
where in spite of notorious poverty. 

Mignet, the historian, was a most intimate and con- 
stant friend of Thiers. Mignet, though rich in reality, 
as he knew how to live contentedly on moderate means, 
was poor in comparison with his friend. This inequal- 
ity did not affect their friendship in the least ; for both 
were great workers, well qualified to understand each 
other, though Thiers lived in a grand house, and Mignet 



THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 121 

in a barely furnished lodging high up in a house that 
did not belong to him. 

Mignet was a bachelor, and they were both child- 
less men ; but imagine them with large families. One 
family would have been bred in the greatest luxury, the 
other in austere simplicity. Children are keenly alive 
to these distinctions ; and even if there had been neither 
pride in the rich house nor envy in the poorer one the 
contrast would have been constantly felt. The histori- 
cal studies that the fathers had in common would prob- 
ably not have interested their descendants, and unless 
there had been some other powerful bond of sympathy 
the two families would have lived in different worlds. 
The rich family would have had rich friends, the poorer 
family would have attached itself to other families with 
whom it could have exchanged hospitalit}- on ' more 
equal terms. This would have happened even in Paris, 
a city where there is a remarkable absence of contempt 
for poverty ; a city where the slightest reason for dis- 
tinction will admit any well-bred man into society in 
spite of narrow means and insure him immunity from 
disdain. All the more certainly would it happen in 
places where money is the only regulator of rank, the 
only acknowledged claim to consideration. 

I once knew an English merchant who was reputed 
to be wealtlry, and who, like a true Englishman as he 
was, inhabited one of those great houses that are so 
elaborately contrived for the exercise of hospitality. 
He had a kind and friendly heart, and lived surrounded 
by people who often did him the favor to drink his 
excellent wines and sleep in his roomy bedchambers. 



122 THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 

On his death it turned out that he had never been 
quite so rich as he appeared and that during his last 
decade his fortune had rapidly dwindled. Being much 
interested in everything that may confirm or invalidate 
those views of human nature that are current in ancient 
and modern literature, I asked his son how those who 
were formerly such frequent guests at the great house 
had behaved to the impoverished family. " The}' 
simply avoided us," he said; "and some of them, 
when they met me, would cut me openly in the 
street." 

It may be said with perfect truth that this was a good 
riddance. It is certain that it was so ; it is undeniable 
that the deliverance from a horde of false friends is 
worth a considerable sum per head of them ; and that 
in itself was onry a subject of congratulation, but their 
behavior was hard to bear because it was the evidence 
of a fall. We like deference as a proof that we have 
what others respect, quite independently of any real 
affection on their part ; nay, we even enjo} T the forced 
deference of those who hate us, well knowing that they 
would behave very differently if they dared. Besides 
this, it is not certain that an impoverished family will 
find truer friends amongst the poor than it did formerly 
amongst the rich. The relation may be the same as 
it was before, and only the incomes of the parties 
altered. 

What concerns our present subject is simply that 
changes of pecuniary situation have alwa}*s a strong 
tendency to throw people amongst other associates ; and 
as these changes are continually occurring, the result is 



THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 123 

that families very rarely preserve the same acquaint- 
ances for more than a single generation. And now 
comes the momentous issue. The influence of our as- 
sociates is so difficult to resist, in fact so completely 
irresistible in the long run, that people belong far less 
to the class they are descended from than to the class 
in which they live. The younger son of some perfectly 
aristocratic family marries rather imprudently and is 
impoverished by family expenses. His son marries 
imprudently again and goes into another class. The 
children of that second marriage will probably not have 
a trace of the peculiarly aristocratic civilization. They 
will have neither the manners, nor the ideas, nor the 
unexpressed instincts of the real aristocrac} 7 from which 
they sprang. In place of them they will have the ideas 
of the lower middle class, and be in habits and manners 
just as completely of that class as if their forefathers 
had always belonged to it. 

I have in view two instances of this which are es- 
pecially interesting to me because the}' exemplify it in 
opposite ways. In one of these cases the man was vir- 
tuous and religious, but though his ancestry was aris- 
tocratic his virtues and his religion were exactly those 
of the English middle class. He was a good Bible- 
reading, Sabbath-observing, theatre-avoiding Evangeli- 
cal, inclined to think that dancing was rather sinful, 
and in all those subtle points of difference that distin- 
guish the middle-class Englishman from the aristocratic 
Englishman he followed the middle class, not seeming 
to have any unconscious reminiscence in his blood of 
an ancestiy with a freer and lordlier life. He cared 



124 THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 

neither for the sports, nor the studies, nor the social 
intercourse of the aristocracy. His time was divided, 
as that of the typical good middle-class Englishman 
generally is, between business and religion, except 
when he read his newspaper. By a combination of 
industry and good-fortune he recovered wealth, and 
might have rejoined the aristocracy to which he be- 
longed by right of descent ; but middle-class habits 
were too strong, and he remained contentedly to the 
close of life both in that class and of it. 

The other example I am thinking of is that of a man 
still better descended, who followed a profession which, 
though it offers a good field for energy and talent, is 
seldom pursued by gentlemen. He acquired the habits 
and ideas of an intelligent but dissipated working-man, 
his vices were exactly those of such a man, and so was 
his particular kind of religious scepticism. I need not 
go further into detail. Suppose the character of a very 
clever but vicious and irreligious workman, such as 
may be found in great numbers in the large English 
towns, and }~ou have the accurate portrait of this 
particular declasse. 

In mentioning these two cases I am anxious to avoid 
misinterpretation. I have no particular respect for one 
class more than another, and am especially disposed to 
indulgence for the faults of those who bear the stress 
of the labor of the world ; but I see that there are 
classes, and that the fluctuations of fortune, more than 
any other cause, bring people within the range of influ- 
ence exercised by the habits of classes, and form them 
in the mould, so that their virtues and vices afterwards, 



THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 125 

besides their smaller qualities and defects, belong to 
the class they live in and not to the class they may 
be descended from. In other words, men are more 
strongly influenced by human intercourse than by 
heredity. 

The most remarkable effect of the fluctuation of 
wealth is the extreme rapidity with which the pros- 
perous family gains refinement of manners, whilst the 
impoverished family loses it. This change seems to be 
more rapid in our own age and country than it has 
ever been before. Nothing is more interesting than to 
watch this double process ; and nothing in social studies 
is more curious than the multiplicity of the minute 
causes that bring it about. Every abridgment of cere- 
moivy has a tendency to lower refinement by introducing 
that sans- gene which is fatal to good manners. Cere- 
moiry is only compatible with leisure. It is abridged 
b} T haste ; haste is the result of poverty ; and so it 
comes to pass that the loss of fortune induces people 
to give up one little observance after another, for econ- 
omy of time, till at last there are none remaining. 
There is the excellent habit of dressing for the evening 
meal. The mere cost of it is almost imperceptible, 
except that it causes a small additional expenditure in 
clean linen ; but, although the pecuniary tax is slight, 
there is a tax on time which is not compatible with 
hurry and irregularis, so it is only people of some 
leisure who maintain it. Now consider the subtle influ- 
ence, on manners, of the maintenance or abandonment 
of this custom. Where it is kept up, gentlemen and 
ladies meet in a drawing-room before dinner prepared 



126 THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 

by their toilet for the disciplined intercourse of well- 
regulated social life. Thej T are like officers in uniform, 
or clergymen in canonicals : they wear a dress that is 
not without its obligations. It is not the luxury of it 
that does this, for the dress is always plain for men 
and often simple for ladies, but the mere fact of taking 
the trouble to dress is an act of deference to civiliza- 
tion and disposes the mind to other observances. It 
has the further advantage of separating us from the 
occupations of the day and marking a new point of 
departure for the gentler life of the evening. As peo- 
ple become poorer they give up dressing except when 
they have a party, and then they feel ill at ease from 
the consciousness of a white tie. You have only to go 
a little further in this direction to arrive at the people 
who do not feel any inclination to wash their hands 
before dinner, even when they visibly need it. Finally 
there are houses where the master will sit down to table 
in his shirt- sleeves and without anything round his 
neck. People who live in this way have no social inter- 
course whatever of a slightly ceremonious kind, and 
therefore miss all the discipline in manners that rich 
people go through every day. The higher society is a 
school of manners that the poor have not leisure to 
attend. 

The downward course of an impoverished family is 
strongly aided by an element in many natures that the 
discipline of high life either subdues or eliminates. 
There are alwaj's people, especialh T in the male sex, 
who feel ill at ease under ceremonial restraints of any 
kind, and who find the release from them an ineffably 



THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 127 

delightful emancipation. Such people hate dressing for 
dinner, hate the forms of politeness, hate gloves and 
visiting-cards, and all that such things remind them of. 
To be rid of these things once for all, to be able to sit 
and smoke a pipe in an old gray coat, seems to them 
far greater and more substantial happiness than to 
drink claret in a dining-room, napkin on knee. Once 
out of society, such men have no desire to enter it again, 
and after a very short exclusion from it they belong to 
a lower class from taste quite as much as from circum- 
stances. All those who have a tendency towards the 
philosophy of Diogenes (and they are more numer- 
ous than we suppose) are of this manner of thinking. 
Sometimes they have a taste for serious intellectual 
pursuits which makes the nothings of society seem 
frivolous, and also consoles their pride for an apparent 
decheance. 

If it were possible to get rid of the burdensome 
superfluities of high life, most of which are useless en- 
cumbrances, and live simply without any loss of refine- 
ment, I should say that these philosophers would have 
reason on their side. The complicated apparatus of 
wealthy life is not in itself desirable. To convert the 
simple act of satisfying hunger into the tedious ceremo- 
nial of a state dinner may be a satisfaction of pride, but 
it is assuredly not an increase of pleasure. To receive 
as guests people whom we do not care for in the least 
(which is constantly done by rich people to maintain 
their position) offers less of what is agreeable in human 
intercourse than a chat with a real friend under a shed 
of thatch. Nevertheless, to be totally excluded from 



128 THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 

the life of the wealthy is to miss a discipline in manners 
that nothing ever replaces, and this is the real loss. 
The cultivation of taste which results from leisure forms, 
in course of time, amongst rich people a public opinion 
that disciplines every member of an aristocratic society 
far more severely than the more careless opinion of the 
hurried classes ever disciplines them. To know the 
value of such discipline we have only to observe so- 
cieties from which it is absent. We have many oppor- 
tunities for this in travelling, and one occurred to me 
last 3 T ear that I will describe as an example. I was 
boating with two 3'oung friends on a French river, and 
we spent a Sunday in a decent riverside inn, where we 
had dejeuner in a corner of the public room. Several 
men of the neighborhood, probably farmers and small 
proprietors, sat in another corner playing cards. They 
had a very decent appearance, the}' were fine healthy- 
looking men, quite the contrary of a degraded class, 
and they were only amusing themselves temperately on 
a Sunday morning. Well, from the beginning of their 
game to the end of it (that is, during the whole time 
of our meal) , they did nothing but shout, yell, shriek, 
and swear at each other loudly enough to be heard 
across the broad river. They were not angry in the 
least, but it was their habit to make a noise and to use 
oaths and foul language continually. We, at our table, 
could not hear each other's voices ; but this did not 
occur to them. They had no notion that their nois3 r 
kind of intercourse could be unpleasant to anybody, 
because delicacy of sense, fineness of nerve, had not 
been developed in their class of society. Afterwards 



THE FLUX OF WEALTH. 129 

I asked tkein for some information, which they gave 
with a real anxiety to make themselves of use. Some 
rich people came to the inn with a pretty carriage, and 
I amused myself by noting the difference. Their man- 
ners were perfectly quiet. Wiry are rich people quiet 
and poorer ones noisy? Because the refinements of 
wealthy life, its peace and tranquillity, its leisure, its 
facilities for separation in different rooms, produce 
delicacy of nerve, with the perception that noise is dis- 
agreeable; and out of this delicacy, when it is general 
amongst a whole class, springs a strong determination 
so to discipline the members of the class that the}?- shall 
not make themselves disagreeable to the majority. 
Hence lovers of good manners have a preference for 
the richer classes quite apart from a love of physical 
luxury or a snobbish desire to be associated with people 
of rank. For the same reason a lover of good manners 
dreads poverty or semi-poverty for his children, because 
even a moderate degree of poverty (not to speak of the 
acute forms of it) may compel them to associate with the 
undisciplined. What gentleman would like his son to 
live habitually with the card-players I have described? 



130 DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH, 



ESSAY X. 

DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 

' I ^HE most remarkable peculiarity about the desire 
-*- to establish distinctions of rank is not that there 
should be definite gradations amongst people who have 
titles, but that, when the desire is strong in a nation, 
public opinion should go far beyond heralds and parch- 
ments and gazettes, and establish the most minute 
gradations amongst people who have nothing honorific 
about them. 

When once the rule is settled by a table of prece- 
dence that an earl is greater than a baron, we simply 
acquiesce in the arrangement, as we are ready to 
believe that a mandarin with a yellow jacket is a 
much-to-be-honored sort of mandarin ; but what is the 
power that strikes the nice balance of social advantages 
in favor of Mr. Smith as compared with Mr. Jones, 
when neither one nor the other has any title, or ances- 
try, or an} T thing whatever to boast of ? Amongst the 
many gifts that are to be admired in the fair sex this 
seems one of the most nrysterious, that ladies can so 
decidedly fix the exact social position of every human 
being. Men soon find themselves bewildered by con- 
flicting considerations, but a woman goes to the point 
at once, and settles in the most definite manner that 
Smith is certainly the superior of Jones. 



DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 131 

This may bring upon me the imputation of being a 
democrat and a leveller. No, I rather like a well- 
defined social distinction when it has reality. Real 
distinctions keep society picturesque and interesting ; 
what I fail to appreciate so completely are the ficti- 
tious little distinctions that have no basis in reality, 
and appear to be instituted merely for the sake of 
establishing differences that do not naturally exist. It 
seems to be an unfortunate tendency that seeks unap- 
parent differences, and it may have a bad effect on 
character by forcing each man back upon the consid- 
eration of his own claims that it would be better for 
him to forget. 

I once dined at a country-house in Scotland when 
the host asked one of the guests this question, "Are 
you a land-owner?" in order to determine his prece- 
dence. It did so happen that the guest owned a few 
small farms, so he answered "Yes;" but it struck me 
that the distinction between a man who had a moder- 
ate sum invested in land and one who had twice as 
much in other investments was not clearly in favor of 
the first. Could not the other buy land any day if he 
liked? He who hath gold hath land, potentially. If 
precedence is to be regulated by so material a consid- 
eration as wealth, let it be done fairly and plainly. 
The best and simplest plan would be to embroider the 
amount of each gentleman's capital in gold thread on 
the breast of his dress-coat. The metal would be 
appropriate, the embroidery would be decorative, and 
the practice would offer unequalled encouragement to 
thrift. 



132 DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 

Again, I have always understood in the most confused 
manner the distinction, so clear to many, between 
those who are in trade and those who are not. I 
think I see the only real objection to trade with the 
help of M. Renan, who has stated it very clearly, but 
my difficulty is to discover who are tradesmen, and, still 
more, who are not tradesmen. Here is M. Renan' s 
account of the matter : — 

" Our ideal can only be realized with a Government that 
gives some eclat to those who are connected with it and 
which creates distinctions outside of wealth. We feel an 
antipathy to a society in which the merit of a man and his 
superiority to another can only be revealed under the form 
of industry and commerce ; not that trade and industry are 
not honest in our eyes, but because we see clearly that the 
best things (such as the functions of the priest, the magis- 
trate, the savant, the artist, and the serious man of letters) 
are the inverse of the industrial and commercial spirit, the 
first duty of those who follow them being not to try to enrich 
themselves, and never to take into consideration the venal 
value of what they do." 

This I understand, provided that the priest, magis- 
trate, savant, artist, and serious man of letters are 
faithful to this " first duty ; " provided that they " never 
take into consideration the venal value of what they 
do ; " but there are tradesmen in the highest professions. 
All that can be said against trade is that its object is 
profit. Then it follows that eveiy profession followed 
for profit has in it what is objectionable in trade, and 
that the professions are not noble in themselves but 
only if the} T are followed in a disinterested spirit. I 
should say, then, that any attempt to fix the degree 



DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 133 

of nobleness of persons by the supposed nobleness of 
their occupations must be founded upon an unreal 
distinction. A venal clergyman who does not believe 
the dogmas that he defends for his endowment, a venal 
barrister, ready to prostitute his talents and his tongue 
for a large income, seem to me to have in them far 
more of what is objectionable in trade than a country 
bookseller who keeps a little shop and sells note-paper 
and sealing-wax over the counter ; yet it is assumed 
that their occupations are noble occupations and that 
his business is not noble, though I can see nothing what- 
ever in it of which an} r gentleman need be in the slight- 
est degree ashamed. 

Again, there seem to be most unreal distinctions 
of respectability in the trades themselves. The wine 
trade has always been considered a gentlemanly busi- 
ness ; but why is it more respectable to sell wine and 
spirits than to sell bread, or cheese, or beef ? Are not 
articles of food more useful to the community than alco- 
holic drinks, and less likely to contribute to the general 
sum of evil? As for the honesty of the dealers, no 
doubt there are honest wine-merchants ; but what thing 
that is sold for mone}^ has been more frequently adul- 
terated, or more mendaciously labelled, or more un- 
scrupulously charged for, than the produce of European 
vintages ? 1 

1 That valiant enemy of false pretensions, Mr. Punch, has often 
done good service in throwing ridicule on unreal distinctions. In 
" Punch's Almanack " for 1882 I find the following exquisite con- 
versation beneath one of George Du Maurier's inimitable drawings : 

Grigsby. Do you know the Joneses ? 

Mrs. Brown. No, we — er— don't care to know Business 



134 DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 

Another wonderful unreality is the following. Peo- 
ple desire the profits of trade, but are unwilling to lose 
caste by engaging in it openly. In order to fill their 
pockets and preserve their rank at the same time they 
engage in business anonymously, either as members ot 
some firm in which their names do not appear, or else 
as share-holders in great trading enterprises. In both 
these cases the investor of capital becomes just as really 
and truly a tradesman as if he kept a shop, but if you 
were to tell him that he was a tradesman he would 
probably resent the imputation. 

It is remarkable that the people who most despise 
commerce are the very people who bow down most 
readily before the accomplished results of commerce ; 
for as they have an exaggerated sense of social dis- 
tinctions, they are great adorers of wealth for the dis- 
tinction that it confers. By their worship of wealth 
they acknowledge it to be most desirable ; but then 
they worship rank also, and this other cultus goes with 
the sentiment of contempt for humble and plodding 
industry in all its forms. 

The contempt for trade is inconsistent in another 
way. A man may be excluded from "good society" 
because he is in trade, and his grandson may be ad- 
mitted because the grandfather was in trade, that is, 

people, as a rule, although my husband 's in business ; but then 
he 's in the Coffee business, — and they 're all Gentlemen in the 
Coffee business, you know ! 

Grigsby (who always suits himself to his company). Really, 
now ! Why, that 's more than can be said of the Army, the Navy, 
the Church, the Bar, or even the House of Lords ! I don't wonder 
at your being rather exclusive { 



DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 135 



through a fortune of commercial Ia^ii&R^£\pfesen ; 
Prime Minister (Gladstone) knd/^pf|Spl^er18S1th( 
House of Commons (Mr. Art^uinEte#l|jp|d^ 
men of high position in both tJ o o p w " m a y ■ ■ <i w u the ir 
fame to their own distinguished abilities ; but they owe 
the leisure and opportunity for cultivating and display- 
ing those abilities to the wits and industry of tradesmen 
removed from them only by one or two generations. 

Is there not a strange inconsistency in adoring wealth 
as it is adored, and despising the particular kind of skill 
and ability by which it is usually acquired? For if 
there be anything honorable about wealth it must surely 
be as evidence of the intelligence and industry that are 
necessary for the conquest of poverty. On the con- 
trary, a narrowly exclusive society despises the virtue 
that is most creditable to the nouveau riche, his in- 
dustry, whilst it worships his wealth as soon as the 
preservation of it is compatible with idleness. 

There is a great deal of unreal distinction in the 
matter of ancestry. Those who observe closely are well 
aware that many undoubted and lineal descendants of 
the oldest families are in humble social positions, simply 
for want of money to make a display, whilst others 
usurp their coats-of-arms and claim a descent that they 
cannot really prove. The whole subject is therefore 
one of the most unsatisfactory that can be, and all that 
remains to the real members of old families who have 
not wealth enough to hold a place in the expensive 
modern aristocracy, is to remember secretly the history 
of their ancestors if they are romantic and poetical 
enough to retain the old-fashioned sentiment of birth. 



136 DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 

and to forget it if the} 7 look only to the present and the 
practical. There is, indeed, so little of the romantic 
sentiment left in the countiy, that even amongst the 
descendants of old families themselves very few are 
able to blazon their own armorial bearings, or even 
know what the verb ' ' to blazon " means. 

Amidst so great a confusion the simplest way would 
be not to think about rank at all, and to take human 
nature as it comes without reference to it ; but however 
the ancient barriers of rank may be broken down , it is 
only to erect new ones. English feeling has a deep 
satisfaction in contemplating rank and wealth com- 
bined. It is that which it likes, — the combination. 
When wealth is gone it thinks that a man should lock 
up his pedigree in his desk and forget that he has an- 
cestors ; so it has been said that an English gentleman 
in losing wealth loses his caste with it, whilst a French 
or Italian gentleman may keep his caste, except in the 
most abject poverty. On the other hand, when an 
Englishman has a vast fortune it is thought right to 
give him a title also, that the desirable combination 
may be created afresh. Nothing is so striking in Eng- 
land, considering that it is an old country, as the new- 
ness of most of the great families. The aristocracy is 
like London, that has the reputation of being a very 
ancient city, yet the houses are of recent date. An 
aristocrac} 7 may be stronger and in better repair be- 
cause of its newness ; it may also be more likely to 
make a display of aristocratic superiorities, and expect 
deference to be paid to them, than an easy-going old 
aristocrac} 7 would be. 



DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 137 

What are the superiorities, and what is the nature of 
the deference? 

The superiority given by title depends on the intensity 
of title-worship amongst the public. In England that 
religion is in a very healthy and flourishing state, so 
that titles are very valuable there ; in France the sense 
of a social hierarchy is so much weakened that titles 
are of infinitely less value. False ones are assumed 
and borne with impunity on account of the general 
indifference, whilst true and authentic titles are often 
dropped as an encumbrance. The blundering igno- 
rance of the French about our titles, which so astonishes 
Englishmen, is due to a carelessness about the whole 
subject that no inhabitant of the British Islands can 
imagine. 1 In those islands title is of very great 

1 I am often amused by the indignant feelings of English jour- 
nalists on this matter. Some French newspaper calls an English- 
man a lord when he is not a lord, and our journalists are amazed 
at the incorrigible ignorance of the French. If Englishmen 
cared as little about titles they would be equally ignorant, and 
two or three other things are to be said in defence of the French 
journalist that English critics never take into account. They 
suppose that because Gladstone is commonly called Mr. a French- 
man ought to know that he cannot be a lord. That does not 
follow. In France a man may be called Monsieur and be a baron 
at the same time. A Frenchman may answer, " If Gladstone is 
not a lord, why do you call him one 1 English almanacs not 
only say that Gladstone is a lord, but that he is the very First Lord 
of the Treasury. Again, why am I not to speak of Sir Chamber- 
lain ? I have seen a printed letter to him beginning with ' Sir,' 
which is plain evidence that your ' Sir ' is the equivalent of our 
Monsieur." A Frenchman is surely not to be severely blamed if 
he is not aware that the First Lord of the Treasury is not a lord 
at all, and that a man who is called a " Sir " inside every letter 
addressed to him has no right to that title on the envelope. 



138 DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 

importance because the people have such a strong con- 
sciousness of its existence. In England, if there is 
a lord in the room everybody is aware of it. 

Superiority of family, without title, is merely local ; 
it is not understood far from the ancestral home. 
Superiority of title is national ; it is imperfectly appre- 
ciated in foreign countries. But superiority of wealth 
has the immense advantage over these that it is re- 
spected everywhere and can display itself everywhere 
with the utmost ostentation under pretext of custom 
and pleasure. It commands the homage of foolish and 
frivolous people hj possibilities of vain display, and 
at the same time it appears desirable to the wise be- 
cause it makes the gathering of experience easy and 
human intercourse convenient. 

The rich man has access to an immense range of 
varied situations ; and if he has energy to profit by this 
facility and put himself in those situations where he 
may learn the most, he may become far more experi- 
enced at thirty-five than a poor man can be at seventy. 
A poor man has a taste for boating, so he builds a little 
boat with his own hands, and paints it green and white, 
with its name, the " Cock- Robin," in yellow. Mean- 
while his good wife, in spite of all the work she has to 
do, has a kindly indulgence for her poor Tom's hobby, 
thinks he deserves a little amusement, and stitches the 
sail for him in the evenings. He sails five or six miles 
up and clown the river. Sir Thomas Brassey has ex- 
actly the same tastes : he builds the " Sunbeam ; " and 
whilst the " Cock-Robin" has been doing its little trips, 
the " Sunbeam " has gone round the world ; and instead 



DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 139 

of stitching the sails, the kind wife has accompanied the 
mariner, and written the story of his voyage. If after 
that you talk with the owners of the two vessels you 
maybe interested for a few minutes — deeply interested 
and touched if you have the divine gift of sympathy 
— with the poor man's account of his doings ; but his 
experience is small and soon told, whilst the owner of 
the " Sunbeam " has traversed all the oceans and could 
tell you a thousand things. So it naturally follows in 
most cases, though the rule has exceptions, that rich 
men are more interesting people to know than poor 
men of equal ability. 

I remember being forcibly reminded of the narrow 
experience of the poor on one of those occasions that 
often happen to those who live in the country and 
know their poorer neighbors. A friend of mine, with 
his children, had come to stay with me ; and there was 
a poor woman, living in a very out-of-the-way hamlet 
on a hill, who had made me promise that I would take 
my friend and his children to see her, because she had 
known their mother, who was dead, and had felt for 
her one of those strong and constant affections that 
often dwell in humble and faithful hearts. We have a 
great respect for this poor woman, who is in all ways 
a thoroughly dutiful person, and she has borne severe 
trials with great patience. Well, she was delighted to 
see my friend and his children, delighted to see how 
well they looked, how much they had grown, and so on ; 
and then she spoke of her own little ones, and showed 
us the books they were learning in, and described their 
dispositions, and said that her husband was in full 



140 DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 

work and went every day to the schist mine, and was 
much steadier than he used to be, and made her much 
happier. After that she began again, saying exactly 
the same things all over again, and she said them a 
third time, and a fourth time. When we had left, we 
noticed this repetition, and we agreed that the poor 
woman, instead of being deficient in intelligence, was 
naturally above the average, but that the extreme 
narrowness of her experience, the total want of variety 
in her life, made it impossible for her mind to get out 
of that little domestic groove. She had about half-a- 
dozen ideas, and she lived in them, as a person in a 
small house lives in a very few rooms. 

Now, however much esteem, respect, and affection 
you may have for a person of that kind, you will find it 
impossible to enjo} 7 such society because conversation 
has no aliment. This is the one great reason why 
cultivated people seem to avoid the poor, even when 
they do not despise them in the least. 

The greater experience of the rich is united to an 
incomparably greater power of pleasant reception, be- 
cause in their homes conversation is not interfered with 
by the multitude of petty domestic difficulties and incon- 
veniences. I go to spend the day with a very poor 
friend, and this is what is likely to happen. He and 
I can only talk without interruption when we are out 
of the house. Inside it his children break in upon us 
constantly. His wife finds me in the way, and wishes 
I had not come, because she has not been able to 
provide things exactly as she desired. At dinner her 
mind is not in the conversation ; she is really occupied 



DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 141 

with petty household cares. I, on my part, have the 
uncomfortable feeling that I am creating inconvenience ; 
and it requires incessant attention to soothe the watch- 
ful sensitiveness of a hostess who is so painfully alive 
to the deficiencies of her small establishment. If I 
have a robust appetite, it is well ; but woe to me if my 
appetite is small, and I must overeat to prove that the 
cookery is good ! If I accept a bed the sacrifice of a 
room will cause crowding elsewhere, besides which I 
shall be a nuisance in the early morning hours when 
nothing in the menage is fit for the public e}^e. Whilst 
creating all this inconvenience to others, I suffer the 
great one of being stopped in my usual pursuits. If I 
want a few quiet hours for reading and writing there 
is only one way : I must go privately to some hotel and 
hire a sitting-room for nryself. 

Now consider the difference when I go to visit a rich 
friend ! The first delightful feeling is that I do not 
occasion the very slightest inconvenience. His ar- 
rangements for the reception of guests are permanent 
and perfect. My arrival will scarcely cost his wife 
a thought ; she has simply given orders in the morning 
for a room to be got ready and a cover to be laid at 
table. Her mind is free to think about any subject 
that suggests itself. Her conversation, from long prac- 
tice, is as easy as the style of a good writer. All 
causes of interruption are carefully kept in the back- 
ground. The household details are attended to by a 
regiment of domestics under their own officers. The 
children are in rooms of their own with their governesses 
and servants, and we see just enough of them to be 



142 DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 

agreeable. If I desire privacy, nothing is more easily 
obtained. On the slightest hint a room is placed at 
my disposal. I remember one house where that room 
used to be a splendid library, full of the books which 
at that time I most wanted to consult ; and the only 
interruption in the mornings was the noiseless entrance 
of the dear lady of the house, always at eleven o'clock 
precisely, with a glass of wine and a biscuit on a little 
silver tray. It is not the material luxury of rich men's 
houses that a wise man would desire ; but he must 
thoroughly appreciate their convenience and the varied 
food for the mind that they afford, — the books, the pic- 
tures, the curiosities. In one there is a museum of 
antiquities that a large town might envy, in another 
a collection of drawings, in a third a magnificent ar- 
mory. In one private house in Paris 1 there used to be 
fourteen noble saloons containing the arts of two hun- 
dred years. You go to stay in ten rich houses and find 
them all different ; you enjoy the difference, and in a 
certain sense you possess the different things. The 
houses of the poor are all alike, or if they differ it is 
not by variety of artistic or intellectual interest. By 
the habit of staying in each other's houses the rich 
multiply their riches to infinity. In a certain way of 
their own (it is not exactly the way of the early Chris- 
tians) they have their goods in common. 

There are, no doubt, many guests in the houses of 

the rich who care little for the people they visit, but 

much for the variety and accommodation, — guests who 

visit the place rather than the owner ; guests who enjoy 

1 That of M. Leopold Double. 



DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 143 

the cookery, the wines, the shooting, and who would 
go to the house if the owner were changed, exactly as 
they continue to patronize some pleasantly situated 
and well-managed hotel, after a change of masters. I 
hardly know how to describe these people in a word, 
but it is easy to characterize their entertainers. They 
are unpaid innkeepers. 

There are also people, apparently hospitable, who 
care little for the persons they invite, — so very little, 
indeed, that we do not easily discover what motive 
they have for inviting them. The answer may be that 
they dislike solitude so much that any guest is accept- 
able, or else that they want admirers for the beautiful 
arrangements and furniture of their houses ; for what 
is the use of having beautiful things if there is nobody 
to appreciate them? Hosts of this class are amateur 
exhibitors, or they are like amateur actors who want 
an audience, and who will invite people to come and 
listen, not because they care for the people, but because 
it is discouraging to play to empty benches. 

These two classes of guests and hosts cannot exist 
without riches. The desire to be entertained ceases 
at once when it is known that the entertainment will 
be of a poor quality ; and the desire to exhibit the inter- 
nal arrangements of our houses ceases when we are too 
poor to do justice to the refinement of our taste. 

The story of the rich man who had many friends and 
saw them fall away from him when he became poor, 
which, under various forms, reappears in every age and 
is common to all literatures, is explained b} r these con- 
siderations. Bucklaw does not find Lord Eavenswood 



144 DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 

a valuable gratuitous innkeeper ; and Ravenswood is not 
anxious to exhibit to Bucklaw the housekeeping at 
Wolfs Crag. 

But quite outside of parasite guests and exhibiting 
entertainers, there still remains the undeniable fact that 
if you like a rich man and a poor one equally well, you 
will prefer the rich man's hospitality for its greater con- 
venience. Nay, more, you will rightly and excusably 
prefer the rich man's hospitality even if you like the 
poor man better, but find his household arrangements 
disagreeable, his wife fagged, worn, irritable, and un- 
gracious, his children ill-bred, obtrusive, and dirty, him- 
self unable to talk about anything rational on account 
of family interruptions, and scarcely his own better 
and higher self at all in the midst of his domestic 
plagues. 1 

There is no nation in the world that has so acute a 
sense of the value, almost the necessity, of wealth for 
human intercourse as the English nation. Whilst in 
other countries people think " Wealth is peace of mind, 
wealth is convenience, wealth is la vie elegante" in 
England they silently accept the maxim, " A large in- 
come is a necessary of life ; " and they class each other 
according to the scale of their establishments, looking 
up with unfeigned reverence to those who have many 

1 I need hardly say that this is not intended as a description of 
poor men's hospitality generally, but only of the effects of poverty 
on hospitality in certain cases. The point of the contrast lies in 
the difference between this uncomfortable hospitality, which a 
lover of pleasant human intercourse avoids, with the easy and 
agreeable hospitality that the very same people would probably 
have offered if they had possessed the conveniences of wealth. 



DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 145 

servants, many horses, and gigantic houses where a 
great hospitality is dispensed. An ordinary English- 
man thinks he has failed in life, and his friends are of 
the same opinion, if he does not arrive at the ability to 
imitate this style and state, at least in a minor degree. 
I have given the best reasons why it is desired ; I un- 
derstand and appreciate them ; but at the same time 
I think it deeply to be deplored that an expenditure 
far beyond what can be met by the physical or intel- 
lectual labor of ordinary workers should be thought 
necessary in order that people may meet and talk in 
comfort. The big English house is a machine that runs 
with unrivalled smoothness ; but it masters its master, 
it possesses its nominal possessor. George Borrow 
had the deepest sense of the Englishman's slavery to 
his big, well-ordered dwelling, and saw in it the cause 
of unnumbered anxieties, often ending in heart-disease, 
paralysis, bankruptcy, and in minor cases sacrificing all 
chance of leisure and quiet happiness. Many a land- 
owner has crippled himself by erecting a great house on 
his estate, — one of those huge, tasteless buildings that 
express nothing but pompous pride. What wisdom 
there is in the excellent old French adage, " A petite 
terre, petite maison " ! 

The reader may remember Herbert Spencer's idea 
that the display of wealth is intended to subjugate. 
Royal palaces are made very vast and magnificent to 
subjugate those who approach the sovereign ; and all 
rich and powerful people use the same means, for the 
same purpose, though in minor degrees. This leads us 
to the price that has to be paid for intercourse with 
10 



146 DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 

persons of great rank and wealth. May we not sus- 
pect that there is a heavy price of some kind, since 
many of the best and noblest minds in the world either 
avoid it altogether or else accept it cautiously and only 
with a very few rich men whom they esteem independ- 
ently of their riches ? 

The answer is that wealth and rank expect deference, 
not so much humble and slavish manners as that in- 
tellectual deference which a thinker can never willingly 
give. The higher the rank of the personage the more 
it is considered ill-bred to contradict him, or even to 
have an opinion of 3 r our own in his presence. This, 
to a thinker, is unendurable. He does not see that 
because a person is rich and noble his views on every- 
thing must be the best and soundest views. 

You, my dear Aristophilus, who by your pleasing 
manners are so well fitted for the very best society, 
could give interesting answers to the following ques- 
tions : Have you never found it advisable to keep 
silence when }~our wealthy host was saying things 
against which } t ou inwardly protested ? Have you not 
sometimes gone a step further, and given a kind of 
assent to some opinion that was not your own ? Have 
you not, by practice, attained the power of giving a 
still stronger and heartier assent to what seemed doubt- 
ful propositions ? 

There is one form of this assent which is deeply 
damaging to character. Some great person, a great 
lady perhaps, unjustly condemns, in your presence, a 
public man for whom 3 T ou have a sincere respect. In- 
stead of boldl} T defending him, } T ou remain silent and 



DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. 147 

acquiescent. You are afraid to offend, afraid to lose 
favor, afraid that if you spoke openly you would not 
be invited to the great house any more. 
• Sometimes not a single individual but a class is 
attacked at once. A great lady is reported to have 
said that she "had a deep objection to French litera- 
ture in all its branches." Observe that this expression 
of opinion contains a severe censure on all French 
authors and on all readers of French literature. Would 
3-ou have ventured to say a word in their defence? 
Would you have dared to hint, for example, that a seri- 
ous mind might be none the worse for some acquaint- 
ance with Montesquieu and De Tocqueville ? No, sir, 
you would have bowed your head and put on a shocked 
expression of countenance-. 

In this wa} r , little by little, by successive abandon- 
ments of what we think, and abdications of what we 
know, we may arrive at a state of habitual and inane 
concession that softens every fibre of the mind. 



148 THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 



ESSAY XL 

THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 

r 1 "HE greatest impediment to free intercourse be- 
-*- tween nations is neither distance nor the differ- 
ences of mental habits, nor the opposition of national 
interests ; it is simply the imperfect manner in which 
languages are usually acquired, and the lazy content- 
ment of mankind with a low degree of attainment in 
a foreign tongue when a much higher degree of attain- 
ment would be necessary to any efficient interchange 
of ideas. 

It seems probable that much of the future happiness of 
humanity will depend upon a determination to learn for- 
eign languages more thoroughly. International ill-will 
is the parent of innumerable evils. From the intellect- 
ual point of view it is a great evil, because it narrows 
our range of ideas and deprives us of light from foreign 
thinkers. From the commercial point of view it is an 
evil, because it leads a nation to deny itself conveniences 
in order to avoid the dreaded result of doing good to 
another country. From the political point of view it 
is an enormous evil, because it leads nations to make 
war upon each other and to inflict and endure all the 
horrors, the miseries, the impoverishment of war rather 
than make some little concession on one side or on both 
sides that would have been made with little difficulty 



THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE, 149 

if the spirit of the two countries had been more friendly. 
May we not believe that a more general spirit of friend- 
liness would result from more personal intercourse, and 
that this would be the consequence of more thorough 
linguistic acquirement? 

It has always seemed to me an inexpressible mis- 
fortune to the French that they should not be better 
acquainted with English literature ; and this not simpl} T 
from the literary point of view, but because on so many 
questions that interest active minds in France it would 
be such an advantage to those minds to be able to see 
how those questions have appeared to men bred in a 
different and a calmer atmosphere. If the French read 
English easily they might often avoid (without ceasing 
to be national) many of those errors that result from 
seeing things only from a single point of view. I know a 
few intelligent Frenchmen who do read our most thought- 
ful writers in the original, and I can see what a gain 
this enlarged experience has been to them. On the other 
hand, it is certain that good French literature may have 
an excellent effect on the literary training of an English- 
man. The careful stud} T of that clear, concise, and 
moderate French writing which is the most perfect 
flower of the cultivated national mind has been most 
beneficial to some English writers, by making them less 
clumsy, less tedious, less verbose. 

Of commercial affairs it would be presumptuous in 
me to say much, but no one disputes that international 
commerce is a benefit, and that it would not be possible 
without a class of men who are acquainted with foreign 
languages. On this class of men, be they merchants 



150 THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 

or corresponding clerks, the commercial intercourse 
between nations must depend. I find it stated by for- 
eign tradesmen that if they were better acquainted with 
the English language much trade that now escapes them 
might be made to pass through their hands. I have 
myself often observed, on a small scale, that transactions 
of an international character have taken place because 
one of the parties happened to know the language of 
the other > when they would certainly not have taken 
place if it had been necessary to make them through an 
agent or an interpreter. 

With regard to peace and war, can it be doubted that 
the main reason for our peaceful relations with the 
United States lies in the fact of our common language ? 
We may have newspaper quarrels, but the newspapers 
themselves help to make every question understood. 
It is far harder to gain acceptance for English ideas in 
France, yet even our relations with France are practi- 
cally more peaceful than of old, and though there is 
intense jealous}^ between the two countries, they under- 
stand each other better, so that differences which would 
certainty have produced bloodshed in the days of Pitt, 
cause nothing worse than inkshed in the days of Glad- 
stone. This happy result may be attributed in great 
part to the English habit of learning French and going 
to Paris or to the south of France. We need not ex- 
pect any really cordial understanding between the two 
countries, though it would be an incalculable benefit to 
both. That is too much to be hoped for ; their jealousy, 
on both sides, is too irritable and too often inflamed 
afresh by new incidents, for neither of them can stir 



THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 151 

a foot without putting the other out of temper ; but we 
may hope that through the quietly and constantly ex- 
erted influence of those who know both languages, war 
may be often, though perhaps not always, avoided. 

Unfortunately an imperfect knowledge of a foreign 
language is of little use, as it does not give any real 
freedom of intercourse. Foreigners do not open their 
minds to one who blunders about their meaning ; they 
consider him to be a sort of child, and address to him 
" eas}^ things to understand." Their confidence is only 
to be won by a demonstration of something like equality 
in intelligence, and nobody can give proof of this un- 
less he has the means of making his thoughts intelli- 
gible, and even of assuming, when the occasion presents 
itself, a somewhat bold and authoritative tone. People 
of mature and superior intellect, but imperfect linguistic 
acquirements, are liable to be treated with a kind of con- 
descending indulgence when out of their own country, 
as if they were as } T oung in 3 r ears and as feeble in 
power of thought as they are in their knowledge of 
foreign languages. 

The extreme rarity of that degree of attainment in 
a foreign language which deserves to be called mastery 
is well known to the very few who are competent to 
judge. At a meeting of French professors Lord 
Houghton said that the wife of a French ambassador 
had told him that she knew only three Englishmen who 
could speak French. One of these was Sir Alexander 
Cockburn, another the Duke of Bedford, and we may 
presume the third to have been Lord Houghton himself. 
Amongst men of letters Lord Houghton only knew one. 



152 THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 

Henry Reeve, the editor of the "Edinburgh Review" 
and translator of the works of De Tocqueville. He 
mentioned Lord Arthur Russell as an example of ac- 
complishment, but he is "quasi French by V esprit, 
education, and marriage." 

On reading the report of Lord Houghton's speech, 
I asked a cultivated Parisian lady (who knows English 
remarkably well and has often been in England) what 
her own experience had been. After a little hesitation 
she said it had been exactly that of the French ambas- 
sadress. She, also, had met with three Englishmen 
who spoke French, and she named them. I suggested 
several others, and amongst them some very learned 
scholars, merely to hear what she would say, but her 
answer was that their inadequate power of expression 
compelled them to talk far below the level of their 
abilities, so that when they spoke French nobody would 
suppose them to be clever men. She also affirmed that 
they did not catch the shades of French expression, so 
that in speaking French to them one was never sure of 
being quite accurately understood. 

I myself have known many French people who have 
studied English more or less, including several who 
read English authors with praiseworthy industry, but 
I have only met with one or two who can be said to 
have mastered the language. I am told that M. Bel- 
jame, the learned Professor of English Literature at the 
Sorbonne, has a wonderful mastery of our tongue. 
Many French professors of English have considerable 
historical and grammatical knowledge of it, but that is 
not practical mastery. In general, the knowledge of 



THE. OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 153 

English attained by French people (not without more 
labor than the result would show) is so poor and insuffi- 
cient as to be almost useless. 

I remember an accidental circumstance that put into 
my hands some curious materials for judging of the 
attainments of a former generation. A Belgian lady, 
for a reason that has no concern with our present sub- 
ject, lent me for perusal an important packet of letters 
in the French language written by English ladies of great 
social distinction about the date of Waterloo. They 
showed a rough familiarity with French, but no knowl- 
edge of its finer shades, and they abounded in glaring 
errors. The effect of this correspondence on my mind 
was that the writers had certainly used (or abused) the 
language, but that they had never condescended to 
learn it. 

These and other experiences have led me to divide 
progress in languages into several stages, which I place 
at the reader's disposal in the belief that they may be 
convenient to him as they have been convenient to me. 

The first stage in learning a language is when every 
sentence is a puzzle and exercises the mind like a 
charade or a conundrum. There are people to whom 
this kind of exercise is a sport. They enjoy the puzzle 
for its own sake and without any reference to the 
literary value of the sentence or its preciousness as an 
utterance of wisdom. Such people are much better 
adapted to the early stage of linguistic acquirement 
than those who like reading and dislike enigmas. 

The excessive slowness with which one works in this 
early stage is a cause of irritation when the student 



154 THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 

interests himself in the thoughts or the narrative, be- 
cause what comes into his mind in a given time is so 
small a matter that it seems not worth while to go on 
working for such a little intellectual income. There- 
fore in this early stage it is a positive disadvantage to 
have eager literary desires. 

In the second stage the student can push along with 
the help of a translation and a dictionary ; but this is 
not reading, it is only aided construing. It is disagree- 
able to a reader, though it may be endured by one who 
is indifferent to reading. This may be made clear by 
reference to other pursuits. A man who loves rowing, 
and who knows what rowing is, does not like to pull a 
slow and heavy boat, such as an ordinary Scottish 
Highlander pulls with perfect contentment. So a man 
who loves reading, and knows what reading is, does not 
like the heavy work of laborious translation. This 
explains the fact which is often so unintelligible to 
parents, that bo3 T s who are extremely fond of reading 
often dislike their classical studies. Grammar, prosody, 
philology, so far as they are the subjects of conscious 
attention (which they are with all pedagogues) , are the 
rivals of literature, and so it happens that pedagogy is 
unfavorable to literary art. It is only when the sciences 
of dissection are forgotten that we can enjoy the arts 
of poetry and prose. 

If, then, the first stage of language-learning requires 
rather a taste for solving puzzles than a taste for liter- 
ature, so I should say that the second stage requires 
rather a turn for grammatical and philological con- 
siderations than an interest in the ideas or an apprecia- 






THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 155 

tion of the style of great authors. The most favorable 
state of mind for progress in this stage is that of a 
philologist ; and if a man has literary tastes in great 
strength, and philological tastes in a minor degree, he 
will do well, in this stage, to encourage the philologist 
in himself and keep his love of literature in abeyance. 

In the third stage the vocabulary has become rich 
enough to make references to the dictionary less fre- 
quent, and the student can read with some degree ot 
literary enjo3 7 ment. There is, however, this remaining 
obstacle, that even when the reader knows the words 
and can construe well, the foreign manner of saying 
things still appears unnatural. I have made many 
inquiries concerning this stage of acquirement and find 
it to be very common. Men of fair scholarship in Latin 
tell me that the Eoman way of writing does not seem 
to be really a natural way. I find that even those 
Latin works which were most familiar to me in youth, 
such as the Odes of Horace, for example, seem unnatu- 
ral still, though I may know the meaning of every word, 
and I do not believe that any amount of labor would 
ever rid me of this feeling. This is a great obstacle, 
and not the less that it is of such a subtle and intangible 
nature. 1 

In the fourth stage the mode of expression seems 
natural, and the words are perfectly known, but the 
sense of the paragraph is not apparent at a glance. 
There is the feeling of a slight obstacle, of something 
that has to be overcome ; and there is a remarkable 
counter-feeling which always comes after the paragraph 
1 Italian, to me, seems Latin made natural. 



156 THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 

is mastered. The reader then wonders that such an 
obviously intelligible page can have offered any opposi- 
tion whatever. What surprises us is that this fourth 
stage can last so long as it does. It seems as if it 
would be so easily passed, and yet, in fact, it is for 
most persons impassable. 

The fifth stage is that of perfection in reading. It 
is not reached by everybody even in the native lan- 
guage itself. The reader who has attained it sees the 
contents of a page and catches their meaning at a glance 
even before he has had time to read the sentences. 

This condition of extreme lucidity in a language 
comes, when it comes at all, long after the mere acqui- 
sition of it. I have said that it does not always come 
even in the native tongue. Some educated people take 
a much longer time than others to make themselves 
acquainted with the contents of a newspaper. A clever 
newspaper reader sees in one minute if there is any- 
thing of importance. He knows what articles and 
telegrams are worth reading before he separates the 
words. 

These five stages refer only to reading, because edu- 
cated people learn to read first and to speak afterwards. 
Uneducated people learn foreign languages by ear in a 
most confused and blundering way. I need not add 
that they never master them, as onry the educated ever 
master their native tongue. It is unnecessary to go 
through the stages of progress in conversation, as they 
are in a great degree dependent upon reading, though 
they lag behind it ; but I will say briefly that the great- 
est of all difficulties in using foreign languages is to 



THE' OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 157 

become really insensible to the absurdities that they 
contain. All languages, I believe, abound in absurd ex- 
pressions ; and a foreigner, with his inconveniently fresh 
perceptions, can hardly avoid being tickled by them. 
He cannot use the language seriously without having first 
become unconscious of these things, and it is inexpres- 
sibly difficult to become unconscious of something that 
has once provoked us to laughter. Again, it is most 
difficult to arrive at that stage when foreign expressions 
of politeness strike us no more and no less than they 
strike the native ; or, in other words, it is most difficult 
for us to attach to them the exact value which they 
have in the country where they prevail. French forms 
seem absurdry ceremonious to Englishmen ; in reality, 
they are only convenient, but the difficulty for an Eng- 
lishman is to feel that they are convenient. There are 
in ever} T foreign tongue two classes of absurdities, — 
the real inherent absurdities to which the natives are 
blinded by habit, though they are seen at once to be 
comical when attention is directed to them, and the 
expressions that are not absurd in themselves but only 
seem so to us because they are not like our own. 

The difficulty of becoming insensible to these things 
must be especially great for humorous people, who are 
constantly on the look-out for subjects of odd remarks. 
I have a dear friend who is gifted with a delightful 
genius for humor, and he knows a little French. All 
that he has acquired of that language is used by him 
habitually as material for fun, and as he is quite inca- 
pable of regarding the language as anything but a funny 
way of talking, he cannot make any progress in it. If 



158 THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 

he were asked to read prayers in French the idea would 
seem to him incongruous, a mingling of frivolous with 
sacred things. Another friend is serious in French 
because he knows it well, and therefore has become 
unconscious of its real or apparent absurdities, but 
when he is in a merry mood he talks Italian, with 
which he is much less intimately acquainted, so that 
it still seems droll and amusing. 

Many readers will be already familiar with the idea 
of a universal language, which has often been the sub- 
ject of speculation in recent times, and has even been 
discussed in a sort of informal congress connected with 
one of the universal exhibitions. Nobody now looks 
forward to anything so unlikely, or so undesirable, as 
the abandonment of all the languages in the world 
except one. What is considered practicable is the se- 
lection of one language as the recognized international 
medium, and the teaching of that language everywhere 
in addition to the mother tongue, so that no two edu- 
cated men could ever meet without possessing the 
means of communication. To a certain degree we 
have this already in French, but French is not known 
so generally, or so perfectly, as to make it answer the 
purpose. It is proposed to adopt modern Greek, which 
has several great advantages. The first is that the old 
education has familiarized us sufficiently with ancient 
Greek to take away the first sense of strangeness in 
the same language under its modern form. The second 
is that everything about modern arts and sciences, and 
political life, and trade, can be said easily in the Greek 
of the present day, whilst it has its own peculiar interest 



THE- OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 159 

for scholars. The third reason is of great practical 
importance. Greece is a small State, and therefore 
does not awaken those keen international jealousies 
that would be inevitably aroused by proposing the lan- 
guage of a powerful State to be learned, without reci- 
procity, by the youth of the other powerful States. It 
may be some time before the Governments of great 
nations agree to promote the study of modern Greek, or 
any other living language, amongst their peoples ; but 
if all who feel the immense desirableness of a common 
language for international intercourse would agree to 
prepare the way for its adoption, the time might not 
be very far distant when statesmen would begin to con- 
sider the question within the horizon of the practical. 
Let us try to imagine the difference between the present 
Babel-confusion of tongues, which makes it a mere 
chance whether we shall be able to communicate with 
a foreigner or not, and the sudden facility that would 
result from the possession of a common medium of 
intercourse ! If it were once agreed by a union of 
nations (of which the present Postal Union may be 
the forerunner) that the learning of the universal lan- 
guage should be encouraged, that language would be 
learned with a zest and eagerness of which our present 
languid linguistic attempts give but a faint idea. There 
would be such powerful reasons for learning it ! All 
those studies that interest men in different nations 
would lead to intercommunication in the common 
tongue. Many books would be written in it, to be cir- 
culated everywhere, without being enfeebled and falsi- 
fied by translation. International commerce would be 



160 THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. 

transacted by its means. Travelling would be enor- 
mously facilitated. There would be such a gain to hu- 
man intercourse by language that it might be preferred, 
in many cases, to the old-fashioned international inter- 
course by means of bayonets and cannon-balls. 



TEE' OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 161 



ESSAY XII. 

THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 

TTUMAN intercourse, on equal terms, is difficult or 
-*- ■*■ impossible for those who do not belong to that 
religion which is dominant in the country where they 
live. The tendency has always been either to exclude 
such persons from human intercourse altogether (a fate 
so hard to bear during a whole life-time that the} 7 have 
often compromised the matter by outward conformity), 
or else to maintain some degree of intercourse with 
them in placing them at a social disadvantage. In 
barbarous times such persons, when obstinate, .are 
removed by taking away their lives ; or if somewhat 
less obstinate they are effectually deterred from the 
profession of heretical opinions by threats of the most 
pitiless punishments. In semi-barbarous times they 
are paralyzed, so far as public action is concerned, by 
political disabilities expressly created for their incon- 
venience. In times which pride themselves on having 
completely emerged from barbarism political disabilities 
are almost entirely removed, but certain class-exclusions 
still persist, by which it is arranged (whilst avoiding 
all appearance of persecution) that although heretics 
are no longer banished from their native land they ma}^ 
be excluded from their native class, and either deprived 
11 



162 THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 

of human intercourse altogether, or left to seek it in 
classes inferior to their own. 

The religious obstacle differs from all other obsta- 
cles in one remarkable characteristic. It is maintained 
only against honest and truth-speaking persons. Ex- 
emption from its operation has always been, and is 
still, uniformly pronounced in favor of all heretics who 
will consent to lie. The honorable unbeliever has 
always been treated harshly ; the unbeliever who had 
no sense of honor has been freely permitted, in every 
age, to make the best use of his abilities for his own 
social advancement. For him the religious obstacle 
is simply non-existent. He has exactly the same 
chances of preferment as the most orthodox Christian. 
In Pagan times, when public religious functions were a 
part of the rank of great laymen, unbelief in the gods 
of Olympus did not hinder them from seeking and ex- 
ercising those functions. Since the establishment of 
Christianity as a State religion, the most stringently 
framed oaths have never prevented an unscrupulous 
infidel from attaining any position that lay within reach 
of his wits and his opportunities. He has sat in the 
most orthodox Parliaments, he has been admitted to 
Cabinet councils, he has worn ro} T al crowns, he has 
even received the mitre, the Cardinal's hat, and the 
Papal tiara. We can never sufficiently admire the 
beautiful order of society by which heretic-plus-liar is 
so graciously admitted eve^where, and heretic-plus- 
honest man is so cautiously and ingeniously kept out. 
It is, indeed, even more advantageous to the dishonest 
unbeliever than at first sight appears ; for not only does 



THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 163 

it open to him all positions accessible to the orthodox, 
but it even gives him a noteworthy advantage over 
honest orthodox} T itself by training him daily and 
hourly in dissimulation. To be kept constantly in the 
habit of dissimulation on oue subject is an excellent 
discipline in the most serviceable of social arts. An 
atheist who reads prayers with a pious intonation, and 
is exemplar} 7 in his attendance at church, and who 
never betrays his real opinions bj T an unguarded word 
or look, though always preserving the appearance of 
the simplest candor, the most perfect openness, is, we 
may be sure, a much more formidable person to con- 
tend with in the affairs of this world than an honest 
Christian who has never had occasion to train himself 
in habitual imposture. Yet good Christians willingly 
admit these dangerous, unscrupulous rivals, and timidly 
exclude those truthful heretics who are onty honest, 
simple people like themselves. 

After religious liberty has been nominally established 
in a country by its lawgivers, its enemies do not con- 
sider themselves defeated, but try to recover, through 
the unwritten law of social customs and observances, 
the ground they have lost in formal legislation. Hence 
we are never sure that religious liberty will exist 
within the confines of a class even when it is loudly 
proclaimed in a nation as one of the most glorious con- 
quests of the age. It is often enjoj'ed very imperfectly, 
or at a great cost of social and even pecuniary sacrifice. 
In its perfection it is the libert}^ to .profess openly, and 
in their full force, those opinions on religious subjects 
which a man holds in his Own conscience, and without 



164 THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 

incurring any kind of punishment or privation on ac- 
count of them, legal or social. For example, a really 
sincere member of the Church of England enjoj^s perfect 
religious liberty in England. 1 He can openly say what 
he thinks, openly take part in religious services that his 
conscience approves, and without incurring the slight- 
est legal or social penalty for so doing. He meets with 
no hindrance, no obstacle, placed in the path of his 
worldly life on account of his religious views. True 
liberty is not that which is attainable at some cost, 
some sacrifice, but that which we can enjoy without 
being made to suffer for it in any way. It is always 
enjoyed, to the full, b}^ every one whose sincere con- 
victions are heartily on the side of authority. Sincere 
Roman Catholics enjoyed perfect religious liberty in 
Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, and in England 
under Mary Tudor. Even a Trappist who loves the 

1 So far as the State and society generally are concerned; but 
there are private situations in which even a member of the State 
Church does not enjoy perfect religious liberty. Suppose the 
case (I am describing a real case) of a lady left a widow and in 
poverty. Her relations are wealthy Dissenters. They offer to 
provide for her handsomely if she will renounce the Church of 
England and join their own sect. Does she enjoy religious liberty ? 
The answer depends upon the question whether she is able to 
earn her own living or not. If she is, she can secure religious 
freedom by incessant labor ; if she is unable to earn her living she 
will have no religious freedom, although she belongs, in con- 
science, to the most powerful religion in the State. In the case 
I am thinking of, the lady had the honorable courage to open a 
little shop, and so remained a member of the Church of England ; 
but her freedom was bought by labor and was therefore not 
the same thing as the best freedom, which is unembittered by 
sacrifice. 



THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 165 

rule of his order enjoys the best kind of liberty within 
the walls of his monastery. He is not allowed to neg- 
lect the prescribed services and other obligations ; but 
as he feels no desire to neglect them he is a free agent, 
as free as if he dwelt in the Abbaye de Theleme of 
Kabelais, with its one rule, "Fay ce que vouldras." 
We may go farther, and say that not only are people 
whose convictions are on the side of authority perfectly 
free agents, but, like successful artists, they are re- 
warded for doing what they themselves prefer. They 
are always rewarded by the approval of their superiors 
and very frequently by opportunities for social advance- 
ment that are denied to those who think differently 
from persons in authority. 

There are cases in which liberty is less complete than 
this, yet is still spoken of as liberty. A man is free to 
be a Dissenter in England and a Protestant in France. 
By this we mean that he will incur no legal disqualifica- 
tion for his opinions ; but does he incur no social penalty ? 
The common answer to this question is that the penalty 
is so slight that there is nothing to complain of. This 
depends upon the particular situation of the Dissenter, 
because the penalty is applied very differently in dif- 
ferent cases, and may vary between an unperceived 
hindrance to an undeveloped ambition and an insur- 
mountable obstacle to an eager and aspiring one. To 
understand this thoroughly, let us ask whether there are 
any positions in which a member of the Church of Eng- 
land would incur a penalty for leaving it. Are there 
any positions that are socially considered to be incom- 
patible with the religious profession of a Dissenter? 



166 THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 

It will be generally admitted that ro} T al personages 
do not enjoy an} r religious libertj^ at all. A royal per- 
sonage must profess the State religion of his country, 
and it is so well understood that this is obligatory and 
has nothing to do with the convictions of the conscience 
that such personages are hardly expected to have any 
conscience in the matter. The} 7 take up a religion as 
part of their situation in the world. A princess may 
abjure her faith for that of an imperial lover, and if he 
dies before marriage she may abjure her adopted faith; 
and if she is asked again in marriage she may abjure 
the religion of her girlhood a second time without ex- 
citing comment, because it is well understood that her 
private convictions may remain undisturbed by such 
changes, and that she submits to them as a necessity 
for which she has no personal responsibihMy. 1 And 
whilst princes are compelled to take up the religion 
which best suits their worldly interests, they are not 
allowed simply to bear the name of the State Church but 
must also conform to its services with diligent regularity. 
In many cases they probably have no objection to this, 
as they may be really conscientious members of the State 
Church, or the}' ma} 7 accept it in a general way as an 
expression of duty towards God (without going into 

1 The phrase adopted by Court journalists in speaking of such 
a conversion is, " The Princess has received instruction in the 
religion which she will adopt on her marriage," or words to that 
effect, just as if different and mutually hostile religions were not 
more contradictory of each other than sciences, and as if a person 
could pass from one religion to another with no more twisting 
and wrenching of previous beliefs than he would incur in passing 
from botany to geology. 



THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 167 

dogmatic details), or they may be ready and willing to 
conform to it for political reasons, as the best means of 
conciliating public opinion ; but however this may be, 
all human fellowship, so far as religion is concerned, 
must, for them, be founded on deference to the State 
religion and a conciliatory attitude towards its ministers. 
The Court circulars of different countries register the suc- 
cessive acts of outward conformity b}^ which the prince 
acknowledges the power of the national priesthood, and 
it would be impossible for him to suspend these acts of 
conformity for any reason except illness. The daily 
account of the life of a French sovereign during the 
hunting season used to be, " His Majest}^ heard mass ; 
His Majesty went out to hunt." Louis XVIII. had to 
hear mass like his ancestors ; but after the long High 
Mass which he was compelled to listen to on Sundays, 
and which he found extremely wearisome, he enjoyed 
a compensation and a consolation in talking impiously 
to his courtiers, and was maliciously pleased in shock- 
ing pious people and in forcing them to laugh against 
their conscience, as by courtly duty bound, at the 
blasphemous royal jests. This is one of the great 
evils of a compulsory conformity. It drives the victim 
into a reaction against the religion that tyrannizes over 
him, and makes him cmta'-religious, when without pres- 
sure he would have been simply and inoffensively non- 
religious. To understand the pressure that weighs 
upon royal personages in this respect, we have only to 
remember that there is not a sovereign in the whole 
world who could venture to say openly that he was a 
conscientious Unitarian, and would attend a Unitarian 



168 THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 

place of worship. If a King of England held Unita- 
rian opinions, and was at the same time scrupulously 
honest, he would have no resource but abdication, 
for not only is the King a member of the Anglican 
Church, but he is its living head. The sacerdotal 
position of the Emperor of Russia is still more 
marked, and he can no more avoid taking part in the 
fatiguing ceremonies of the orthodox Greek religion 
than he can avoid sitting on horseback and reviewing 
troops. 

The religious slavery of princes is, however, exclu- 
sively in ceremonial acts and verbal professions. With 
regard to the moral side of religion, with regard to 
every religious doctrine that is practically favorable 
to good conduct, exalted personages have always en- 
jo} T ed an astonishing amount of libeity. They are not 
free to hold themselves aloof from public ceremonies, 
but they are free to give themselves up to every kind 
of private self-indulgence, including flagrant sexual im- 
moralities, which are readily forgiven them by a krval 
priesthood and an admiring populace, if only they show 
an affable condescension in their manners. Surely 
morality is a part of Christianity ; surely it is as un- 
christian an act to commit adultery as to walk out 
during service-time on Sunday morning ; } T et adultery 
is far more readily forgiven in a prince, and far easier 
for him, than the merely negative religious sin of absti- 
nence from church-going. Amongst the great criminal 
sovereigns of the world, the Tudors, Bourbons, Bona- 
partes, there has never been any neglect of ceremo- 
nies, but they have treated the entire moral code of 



THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 169 

Christianity as if it were not binding on persons of 
their degree. 

Every hardship is softened, at least in some measure, 
by a compensation ; and when in modern times a man 
is so situated that he has no outward religious liberty 
it is perfectly understood that his conformity is official, 
like that of a soldier who is ordered to give the Host 
a military salute without regard for his private opinion 
about transubstantiation. This being understood, the 
religious slavery of a royal personage is far from being 
the hardest of such slaveries. The hardest cases are 
those in which there is every appearance of liberty, 
whilst some subtle secret force compels the slave to acts 
that have the appearance of the most voluntary sub- 
mission. There are many positions of this kind in the 
world. They abound in countries where the right of 
private judgment is loudly proclaimed, where a man is 
told that he may act in religious matters quite freely 
according to the dictates of his conscience, whilst he 
well knows, at the same time, that unless his con- 
science happens to be in unison with the opinions of 
the majority, he will incur some kind of disability, 
some social paralysis, for having obeyed it. 

The rule concerning the ceremonial part of religion 
appears to be that a man's liberty is in inverse propor- 
tion to his rank. A royal personage has none ; he must 
conform to the State Church. An English nobleman 
has two churches to choose from : he may belong to the 
Church of England or the Church of Rome. A simple 
private gentleman, a man of good family and moderate 
independent fortune, living in a country where the laws 



170 THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 

are so liberal as the}^ are in England, and where on the 
whole there is so little bitterness of religious hatred, 
might be supposed to enjoy perfect religious libertj', 
but he finds, in a practical way, that it is scarcely pos- 
sible for him to do otherwise than the nobility. He has 
the choice between Anglicanism and Romanism, be- 
cause, though untitled, he is still a member of the 
aristocracy. 

As we go down lower in the social scale, to the 
middle classes, and particularly to the lower middle 
classes, we find a broader liberty, because in these 
classes the principle is admitted that a man may be 
a good Christian beyond the pale of the State Churches. 
The liberty here is real, so far as it goes, for although 
these persons are not obliged b} r their own class opinion 
to be members of a State Church, as the aristocracy 
are, they are not compelled, on the other hand, to be 
Dissenters. They ma}^ be good Churchmen, if they 
like, and still be middle-class Englishmen, or they 
may be good Methodists, Baptists, Independents, and 
still be respectable middle-class Englishmen. This 
permits a considerable degree of freedom, yet it is still 
by no means unlimited freedom. The middle-class 
Englishman allows dissent, but he does not encourage 
honesty in unbelief. 

There is, however, a class in English society in 
which for some time past religious liberty has been as 
nearly as possible absolute, — I mean the working popu- 
lation in the large towns. A working-man may belong- 
to the Church of England, or to any one of the dissent- 
ing communities ; or, if he does not believe in Christian- 



THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 171 

it}', he ma} 7 saj T so and abstain from religious Irypocrisy 
of all kinds. Whatever his opinions, he will not be 
regarded very coldly on account of them by persons 
of his own class, nor prevented from manying, nor 
hindered from pursuing his trade. 

We find, therefore, that amongst the various classes 
of societ} T , from the highest to the humblest, religious 
liberty increases as we go lower. The royal family is 
bound to conform to whatever may be the dominant 
religion for the time being ; the nobility and gentry have 
the choice between the present dominant faith and its 
predecessor ; the middle class has, in addition, the 
liberty of dissent ; the lower class has the libert} T , not 
only of dissent, but also of abstinence and negation. 
And in each case the increase of liberty is real ; it is 
not that illusory kind of extension which loses in one 
direction the freedom that it wins in another. All the 
churches are open to the plebeian secularist if he 
should ever wish to enter them. 

We have said that religious liberty increases as we 
go lower in the social scale. Let us consider, now, 
how it is affected by locality. The rule may be stated 
at once. Religious liberty diminishes with the num- 
ber of inhabitants in a place. 

However humble may be the position of the dweller 
in a small village at a distance from a town, he must 
attend the dominant church because no other will be 
represented in the place. He may be in heart a Dis- 
senter, but his dissent has no opportunity of expressing 
itself by a different form of worship. The laws of his 
country may be as liberal as you please ; their liberality 



172 THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 

is of no practical service in such a case as this because 
religious profession requires public worship, and an 
isolated family cannot institute a cult. 

If. indeed, there were the liberty of abstinence the 
evil would not be so great. The liberty of rejection 
is a great and valuable libert}^ If a particular kind 
of food is unsuited to my constitution, and only that 
kind of food is offered me, the permission to fast is 
the safeguard of my health and comfort. The loss of 
this negative liberty is terrible in convivial customs, 
when the victim is compelled to drink against his 
will. 

The Dissenter in the country can be forced to con- 
form by his emplo3'er or by public opinion, acting 
indirectly. The master may avoid sa} T ing, ' ' I expect 
3 7 ou to go to Church," but he may say, " I expect you 
to attend a place of worship," which attains precisely 
the same end with an appearance of greater liberality. 
Public opinion may be really liberal enough to tolerate 
many different forms of religion, but if it does not 
tolerate abstinence from public services the Dissenter 
has to conform to the dominant worship in places where 
there is no other. In England it may seem that there 
is not very much hardship in this, as the Church is not 
extreme in doctrine and is remarkably tolerant of 
varietj 7 , yet even in England a conscientious Unitarian 
might feel some difficulty about creeds and prayers 
which were never intended for him. There are, how- 
ever, harder cases than those of a Dissenter forced to 
conform to the Church of England. The Church of 
Eome is far more extreme and authoritative, far more 



THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 173 

sternly repressive of human reason ; yet there are 
thousands of rural places on the Continent where relig- 
ions toleration is supposed to exist, and where, never- 
theless, the inhabitants are compelled to hear mass to 
avoid the imputation of absolute irreligion. A man 
like Wesley or Bunyan would, in such a position, have 
to choose between apparent Romanism and apparent 
Atheism, if indeed the village opinion did not take 
good care that he should have no choice in the matter. 

It may be said that people should live in places 
where their own form of worship is publicly practised. 
No doubt many do so. I remember an Englishman 
belonging to a Roman Catholic family who would not 
spend a Sunday in an out-of-the-way place in Scotland 
because he could not hear mass. Such a person, hav- 
ing the means to choose his place of residence, and a 
faith so strong that religious considerations always 
came first with him, would compel everything to give 
way to the necessity for having mass every Sunday, 
but this is a very exceptional case. Ordinary people 
are the victims of circumstances and not their masters. 

If a villager has little religious freedom he does not 
greatly enlarge it when he becomes a soldier. He has 
the choice between the Church of England and the 
Church of Rome. In some countries even this very 
moderate degree of libert} r is denied. Within the pres- 
ent century Roman Catholic soldiers were compelled to 
attend Protestant services in Prussia. The truth is 
that the genuine military spirit is strongly opposed to 
individual opinion in matters of religion. Its ideal is 
that every detail in a soldier's existence should be 



174 



THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION. 



settled by the military authorities, his religious belief 
amongst the rest. 

What may be truly said about military authority in 
religious matters is that as the force employed is per- 
fectly well known, — as it is perfectly well known that 
soldiers take part in religious services under compul- 
sion, — there is no hypocrisy in their case, especially 
where the conscription exists, and therefore but slight 
moral hardship. Certainly the greatest hardship of 
all is to be compelled to perform acts of conformity 
with all the appearance of free choice. The tradesman 
who must go to mass to have customers is in a harder 
position than the soldier. For this reason, it is better for 
the moral health of a nation, when there is to be compul- 
sion of some kind, that it should be boldly and openly 
tyrannical ; that its work should be done in the face of 
day ; that it should be outspoken, uncompromising, com- 
plete. To tyranny of that kind a man may give way 
without any loss of self-respect, he yields to force 
majeure ; but to that viler and meaner kind of tyranny 
which keeps a man in constant alarm about the means 
of earning his living, about the maintenance of some 
wretched little peddling position in society, he yields 
with a sense of far deeper humiliation, with a feeling 
of contempt for the social power that uses such miser- 
able means, and of contempt for himself also. 






PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 175 



ESSAY XIII. 

PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

Part I. — Sympathy. 

"W 70MEN hate the Inexorable. They like a condi- 
* » tion of things in which nothing is so surely 
fixed but that the rule may be broken in their favor, or 
the hard decision reversed. They like concession for 
concession's sake, even when the matter is of slight 
importance. A woman will ask a favor from a person 
in authority when a man will shrink from the attempt ; 
and if the woman gains her point hy entreaty she will 
have a keen and peculiar feminine satisfaction in hav- 
ing successfully exercised what she feels to be her own 
especial power, to which the strong, rough creature, 
man, may often be made to yield. A woman will go 
forth on the most hopeless errands of intercession and 
persuasion, and in spite of the most adverse circum- 
stances will not infrequently succeed. Scott made 
admirable use of this feminine tendency in the ' ' Heart 
of Mid-Lothian." Jeanie Deans, with a woman's feel- 
ings and perseverance, had a woman's reliance on her 
own persuasive powers, and the result proved that she 
was right. All things in a woman combine to make 
her mighty in persuasion. Her very weakness aids 
her ; she can assume a pitiful, childlike tenderness. 



176 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

Her ignorance aids her, as she seems never to know 
that a decision can be fixed and final ; then she has 
tears, and besides these pathetic influences she has 
generally some magnetism of sex, some charm or at- 
traction, at least, in voice or manner, and sometimes 
she has that marvellous — that all but irresistible — 
gift of beauty which has ruled and ruined the masters 
of the world. 

Having constantly used these powers of persuasion 
with the strongest being on this planet, and used them 
with such wonderful success that it is even now doubt- 
ful whether the occult feminine government is not 
mightier than the open masculine government, whilst 
it is not a matter of doubt at all, but of assured fact, 
that society is ruled by queens and ladies and not by 
kings and lords, — with all these evidences of their in- 
fluence in this world, it is intelligible that women should 
willingly listen to those who tell them that they have 
similar influence over supernatural powers, and, through 
them, on the destinies of the universe. Far less will- 
ingly would the}^ listen to some hard scientific teacher 
who should say, "No, you have no influence beyond 
this planet, and that which you exercise upon its sur- 
face is limited b}^ the force that you are able to set in 
motion. The Empress Eugenie had no supernatural 
influence through the Virgin Mary, but she had great 
and dangerous natural influence through her husband ; 
and it may be true, what is asserted, that she caused 
in this way a disastrous war." An exclusively origi- 
nating Intelligence, acting at the beginning of Evolu- 
tion, — a setter-in-motion of a prodigious self-acting 



PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 177 

machinery of cause producing effect, and effects in their 
turn becoming a new complexity of causes, — an Intel- 
ligence that we cannot persuade because we are born 
millions of years too late for the first impulse that 
started all things, — this may be the God of the future, 
but it will be a distant future before the world of women 
will acknowledge him. 

There is another element in the feminine nature that 
urges women in the same direction. They have a con- 
stant sense of dependence in a degree hardly ever 
experienced by men except in debilitating illness ; and 
as this sense of dependence is continual with them 
and only occasional with us, it becomes, from habit, 
inseparable from their mental action, whereas even in 
sickness a man looks forward to the time when he will 
act again freely for himself. Men choose a course of 
action ; women choose an adviser. They feel them- 
selves unable to continue the long conflict without help, 
and in spite of their great patience and courage they 
are easily saddened by solitude, and in their distress of 
mind they feel an imperious need for support and con- 
solation. " Our valors are our best gods," is a purely 
masculine sentiment, and to a woman such self-reliance 
seems scarcely distinguishable from impiety. The fem- 
inine counterpart of that would be, " In our weakness 
we seek refuge in Thy strength, Lord ! " 

A woman is not satisfied with merely getting a small 
share in a vast bounty for the general good ; she is 
kind and affectionate herself, she is personally attentive 
to the wants of children and animals, and cares for each 
of them separately, and she desires to be cared for in 
12 



178 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

the same way. The philosopher does not give her any 
assurance of this whatever ; but the priest, on the con- 
traiy, gives it in the most positive form. It is not 
merely one of the doctrines of religion, but the central 
doctrine, the motive for all religious exercises, that 
God cares for every one of us individually ; that he 
knows Jane Smith by name, and what she is earning 
a week, and how much of it she devotes to keeping her 
poor paralyzed old mother. The philosopher saj's, u If 
you are prudent and skilful in your conformity to the 
laws of life }'OU will probably secure that amount of 
mental and ph} T sical satisfaction which is attainable by 
a person of your organization." There is nothing in 
this about personal interest or affection ; it is a bare 
statement of natural cause and consequence. The 
priest holds a very different language ; the use of the 
one word love gives warmth and color to his discourse. 
The priest saj T s, "If you love God with all } T our soul 
and with all your strength He will love and cherish you 
in return, and be your own true and tender Father. 
He will w T atch over every detail and every minute of 
your existence, guard 3*011 from all real evil, and at 
last, when this earthly pilgrimage shall be over, He 
will welcome you in His eternal kingdom." But this 
is not all ; God ma}- still seem at too unapproachable 
a distance. The priest then sa} T s that means have 
been divinely appointed' to bridge over that vast ab}'ss. 
'•The Father has given us the Son, and Christ has 
instituted the Church, and the Church has appointed 
me as her representative in this place, — me, to whom 
you ma}' come alwa}*s for guidance and consolation that 
will never be refused von." 



■PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 179 

This is the language for which the ears of a woman 
thirst as parched flowers thirst for the summer rain. 
Instead of a great, blank universe with fixed laws, 
interesting to savans but not to her, she is told of 
love and affection that she thoroughly understands. 
She is told of an affectionate Creator, of His beloved 
and loving Son, of the tender care of the maternal 
Church that He instituted ; and finally all this chain of 
affectionate interest ends close to her in a living link, 
— a man with soft, engaging manners, with kind and 
gentle voice, who takes her hand, talks to her about 
all that she really cares for, and overflows with the 
readiest sympathy for all her anxieties. This man is 
so different from common men, so very much better 
and purer, and, above all, so much more accessible, 
communicative, and consolatory ! He seems to have 
had so much spiritual experience, to know so well what 
trouble and sorrow are, to sympathize so completely 
with the troubles and sorrows of a woman ! With him, 
the burden of life is ten times easier to bear ; without 
his precious fellowship, that burden would be heavy 
indeed ! 

It may be objected to this, that the clergy do not 
entirely teach a religion of love ; that, in fact, they curse 
as well as bless, and foretell eternal punishment for the 
majority. All this, it may be thought, must be as pain- 
ful to the feelings of women as Divine kindness and 
human felicity must be agreeable to them. Whoever 
made this objection would show that he had not quite 
understood the feminine nature. It is at the same 
time kinder and tenderer than the masculine nature, 



180 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

and more absolute in vindictiveness. Women do not 
generally like the infliction of pain that they believe 
to be undeserved ; 1 they are not generally advocates 
for vivisection ; but as their feelings of indignation 
against evil-doers are very easily aroused, and as they 
are very easily persuaded that severe punishments are 
just, they have often heartily assented to them even 
when most horrible. In these cases their satisfaction, 
though it seems to us ferocious, may arise from feeling 
themselves God's willing allies against the wicked. 
When heretics were burnt in Spain the great ladies 
gazed calmly from their windows and balconies on the 
grotesque procession of miserable morituri with flames 
daubed on their tabards, so soon to be exchanged for 
the fiery reality. With the influence that women pos- 
sess they could have stopped those horrors ; but they 
countenanced them ; and yet there is no reason to be- 
lieve that they were not gentle, tender, affectionate. 
The most relentless persecutor who ever sat on the 
throne of England was a woman. Nor is it only in 
ages of fierce and cruel persecution that women readily 
believe God to be on the side of the oppressor. Other 
ages succeed in which human injustice is not so bold 
and bloodthirsty, not so candid and honest, but more 
stealthily pursues its end by hampering and paralyzing 
the victim that it dares not openly destroy. It places 

1 The word "generally" is inserted here because women do 
apparently sometimes enjoy the infliction of undeserved pain on 
other creatures. They grace bull-fights with their presence, and 
will see horses disembowelled with apparent satisfaction. It may 
be doubted, too, whether the Empress of Austria has any com- 
passion for the sufferings of a fox. 






PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 181 

a thousand little obstacles in his way, the well-calcu- 
lated effect of which is to keep him alive in impotent 
insignificance. In those ages of weaker malevolence 
the heretic is quietly but carefully excluded from the 
best educational and social advantages, from public 
office, from political power. Wherever he turns, what- 
ever he desires to do, he feels the presence of a mys- 
terious invisible force that quietly pushes him aside or 
keeps him in shadow. Well, in this milder, more coldly 
cruel form of wrong, vast numbers of the gentlest and 
most amiable women have always been ready to 
acquiesce. 1 

I willingly pass from this part of the subject, but it 

1 I have purposely omitted from the text another cause for 
feminine indifference to the work of persecutors, but it may be 
mentioned incidentally. At certain times those women whose 
influence on persons in authority might have been effectively 
employed in favor of the oppressed were too frivolous or even 
too licentious .for their thoughts to turn themselves to any such 
serious matter. This was the case in England under Charles II. 
The contrast between the occupations of such women as these 
and the sufferings of an earnest man has been aptly presented by 
Macaulay : — 

" The ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, in the presence and 
under the special sanction of the head of the Church, publicly recited by 
female lips in female ears, while the author of the ' Pilgrim's Progress ' 
languished in a dungeon, for the crime of proclaiming the gospel to the 
poor." 

This is deplorable enough ; but on the whole I do not think 
that the frivolity of light-minded women has been so harmful to 
noble causes as the readiness with which serious women place 
their immense influence at the service of constituted authorities, 
however wrongfully those authorities may act. Ecclesiastical 
authorities especially may quietly count upon this kind of support, 
and they always do so. 



182 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

was impossible not to make one sad reference to it, for 
of all the sorrowful things in the history of the world 
I see none more sorrowful than this, — that the enor- 
mous influence of women should not have been more 
on the side of justice. It is perhaps too much to expect 
that ihey should have placed themselves in advance of 
their age, but they have been innocent abettors and per- 
petuators of the worst abuses, and all from their prone- 
ness to support any authority, however corrupt, if only 
it can succeed in confounding itself with goodness. 

As the representatives of a Deity who tenderly cares 
for every one of His creatures, the clergy themselves 
are bound to cultivate all their own powers and gifts of 
sympathy. The best of them do this with the impor- 
tant result that after some 3 r ears spent in the exercise 
of their profession they become really and unaffectedly 
more sympathetic than laymen generally are. The 
power of s} T mpathy is a great power everywhere, but 
it is so particularly in those countries where the laity 
are not much in the habit of cultivating the sympa- 
thetic feelings, and timidly shrink from the expression 
of them even when they exist. I remember going with 
a French gentleman to visit a lady who had very re- 
cently lost her father ; and my friend made her a little 
speech in which he said no more than what he felt, but 
he said it so elegantly, so delicately, so appropriately, 
and in such feeling terms, that I envied him the talent 
of expressing condolence in that way. I never knew 
an English la} T man who could have got through such 
an expression of feeling, but I have known English 
clergymen who could have done it. Here is a very 



PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 183 

great and real superiority over us, and especially with 
women, because women are exquisitely alive to every- 
thing in which the feelings are concerned, and we often 
seem to them dead in feeling when we are only awk- 
ward, and dumb by reason of our awkwardness. 

I think it probable that most readers of this page 
will find, on consulting their own recollections, that they 
have received warmer and kinder expressions of sym- 
pathy from clerical friends than from laymen. It is 
certainly so in nry own case. On looking back to the 
expressions of sympathy that have been addressed to 
me on mournful occasions, and of rejoicing on happy 
ones, I find that the clearest and most ample and hearty 
utterances of these feelings have generally come either 
from clergymen of the Church of England, or priests 
of the Church of Rome. 

The power of sympathy in clergymen is greatly in- 
creased by their easy access to all classes of society. 
They are received everywhere on terms which may be 
correctly defined as easily respectful ; for their sacred 
character gives them a status of their own, which is 
1 neither raised by association with rich people nor de- 
graded by friendliness with the poor or with that lower 
middle class which, of all classes, is the most perilous 
to the social position of a lajmian. They enter into 
the joys and sorrows of the most different orders of 
parishioners, and in this wa} T , if there is any natural 
gift of sympathy in the mind of a clerg3*man, it is likely 
to be developed and brought to perfection. 

Partly by arrangements consciously devised by ecclesi- 
astical authorities, and partly by the natural force of 



184 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

circumstances, the work of the Church is so ordered that 
her representatives are sure to be present on the most 
important occasions in human life. This gives them 
some influence over men, but that which they gain by 
it over women is immeasurably greater, because the 
minds of women are far more closety and exclusively 
bound up in domestic interests and events. 

Of these the most visibly important is marriage. 
Here the priest has his assured place and conspicuous 
function, and the wonderful thing is that this function 
seems to survive the religious beliefs on which it was 
originally founded. It seems to be not impossible that 
a Church might still survive for an indefinite length of 
time in the midst of surrounding scepticism simply for 
the purpose of performing marriage and funeral rites. 
The strength of the clerical position with regard to mar- 
riage is so great, even on the Continent, that, although 
a woman may have scarcely a shred of faith in the doc- 
trines of the Church, it is almost certain that she will 
desire the services of a priest, and not feel herself to 
be really married without them. Although the civil 
ceremony may be the only one recognized by the law, 
the woman openly despises it, and reserves all her feel- 
ings and emotions for the pompous ceremony at the 
church. On such occasions women laugh at the law, 
and will even sometimes declare that the law itself is 
not legal. I once happened to say that civil marriage 
was obligatory in France, but only legal in England ; 
on which an English lady attacked me vehemently, and 
stoutly denied that civil marriage was legal in England 
at all. I asked if she had never heard of marriages 



PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 185 

in a Registrar's office. "Yes, I have," she answered, 
with a shocked expression of countenance, "but they 
are not legal. The Church of England does not recog- 
nize them, and that is the legal church." 

As soon as a child is born the mother begins to think 
about its baptism ; and at a time of life when the infant 
is treated by laymen as a little being whose importance 
lies entirely in the future the clergyman gives it conse- 
quence in the present by admitting it, with solemn cere- 
mony, to membership in the Church of Christ. It is 
not possible to imagine anything more likely to gratify 
the feelings of a mother than this early admission of 
her unconscious offspring to the privileges of a great 
religious community. Before this great initiation it 
was alone in the world, loved only b}' her, and with 
all its prospects darkened by original sin ; now it is 
purified, blessed, admitted into the fellowship of the 
holy and the wise. A certain relationship of a peculiar 
kind is henceforth established between priest and in- 
fant. In after years he prepares it for confirmation, 
another ceremony touching to the heart of a mother 
when she sees her son gravely taking upon himself the 
responsibilities of a thinking being. The marriage of 
a son or daughter renews in the mother all those feel- 
ings towards the friendly, consecrating power of the 
Church which were excited at her own marriage. 

Then come those anxious occasions when the malady 
of one member of the family casts a shadow on the 
happiness of all. In these cases any clerg3 T man who 
unites natural kindness of heart with the peculiar 
training and experience of his profession can offer 



186 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

consolation incomparably better than a layman ; he is 
more accustomed to it, more authorized. A friendly 
physician is a great help and a great stay so long as 
the disease is not alarming, but when he begins to look 
very grave (the reader knows that look) , and says that 
recovery is not probable, by which physicians mean that 
death is certain and imminent, the clergyman says 
there is hope still, and speaks of a life beyond the 
grave in which human existence will be delivered from 
the evils that afflict it here. When death has come, 
the priest treats the dead body with respect and the 
survivors with sympathy, and when it is laid in the 
ground he is there to the last moment with the majesty 
of an ancient and touching form of words already pro- 
nounced over the graves of millions who have gone to 
their everlasting rest. 1 

1 Since this Essay was written I have met with the following 
passage in Her Majesty's diary, which so accurately describes the 
consolatory influence of clergymen, and the natural desire of 
women for the consolation given by them, that I cannot refrain 
from quoting it. The Queen is speaking of her last interview 
with Dr. Norman Macleod : — 

"He dwelt then, as always, on the love and goodness of God, and on 
his conviction that God would give us, in another life, the means to per- 
fect ourselves and to improve gradually. No one ever felt so convinced, 
and so anxious as he to convince others, that God was a loving Father 
who wished all to come to Him, and to preach of a living personal 
Saviour, One who loved us as a brother and a friend, to whom all could 
and should come with trust and confidence. No one ever raised and 
strengthened one's faith more than Dr. Macleod. His own faith was so ■ 
strong, his heart so large, that all — high and low, weah and strong, the 
erring and the good — could alike find sympathy, help, and consolation 
from him." 

" How I loved to talk to him, to ask his advice, to speak to him of my 
sorrows and anxieties.'" 



PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 187 

Part II. Art. 
I have not yet by any means exhausted the advan- 
tages of the priestly position in its influence upon 
women. If the reader will reflect upon the feminine 
nature as he has known it, especially in women of 
the best kind, he will at once admit that not only are 
women more readil} T moved b} 7 the expression of sym- 
pathy than men, and more grateful for it, but they are 
also more alive to poetical and artistic influences. In 
our sex the aesthetic instinct is occasionally present 
in great strength, but more frequently it is altogether 
absent ; in the female sex it seldom reaches much crea- 
tive force, but it is almost invariably present in minor 
degrees. Almost all women take an interest in fur- 
niture and dress ; most of them in the comfortable 

A little farther on in the same diary Her Majesty speaks of Dr. 
Macleod's beneficial influence upon another lady : — 

" He had likewise a marvellous power of winning people of all kinds, 
and of sympathizing with the highest and with the humblest, and of 
soothing and comforting the sick, the dying, the afflicted, the erring, 
and the doubting. A friend of mine told me that if she were in great 
trouble, or sorrow, or anxiety, Dr. Norman Macleod was the person she 
would wish to go to." 

The two points to be noted in these extracts are: first, the faith 
in a loving God who cares for each of His creatures individually 
(not acting only by general laws); and, secondly, the way in which 
the woman goes to the clergyman (whether in formal confession or 
confidential conversation) to hear consolatory doctrine from his 
lips in application to her own personal needs. The faith and the 
tendency are both so natural in women that they could only cease 
in consequence of the general and most improbable acceptance by 
women of the scientific doctrine that the Eternal Energy is inva- 
riably regular in its operations and inexorable, and that the priest 
has no clearer knowledge of its inscrutable nature than the layman. 



188 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

classes have some knowledge of music ; drawing has 
been learned as an accomplishment more frequently 
by girls than by boys. The clergy have a strong hold 
upon the feminine nature by its aesthetic side. All the 
external details of public worship are profoundly inter- 
esting to women. When there is any splendor in ritual 
the details of vestments and altar decorations are a 
constant occupation for their thoughts, and they fre- 
quently bestow infinite labor and pains to produce 
beautiful things with their own hands to be used in 
the service of the Church. In cases where the service 
itself is too austere and plain to afford much scope for 
this affectionate industry, the slightest pretext is seized 
upon with avidity. See how eagerly ladies will deco- 
rate a church at Christmas, and how they will work to 
get up an ecclesiastical bazaar ! Even in that Church 
which most encourages or permits aesthetic industry, 
the zeal of ladies sometimes goes beyond the desires 
of the clergy, and has to be more or less decidedly- 
repressed. We all can see from the outside how fond 
women generally are of flowers, though I believe it is 
impossible for us to realize all that flowers are to them, 
as there are no inanimate objects that men love with 
such affectionate and even tender solicitude. However, 
we see that women surround themselves with flowers, 
in gardens, in conservatories, and in their rooms ; we 
see that they wear artificial flowers in their dress, and 
that they paint flowers in water-color and on china. 
Now observe how the Church of Rome and the Ritual- 
ists in England show sympathy with this feminine taste ! 
Innumerable millions of flowers are employed annually 



PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 189 

in the churches on the Continent ; they are also used 
in England, though in less lavish profusion, and a ser- 
mon on flowers is preached annually in London, when 
every pew is full of them. 

It is well known that women take an unfailing interest 
in dress. The attention they give to it is close, constant, 
and systematic, like an orderly man's attention to order. 
Women are easily affected by official costumes, and the\ T 
read what great people have worn at levees and drawing- 
rooms. The clergy possess, in ecclesiastical vestments, 
a ver}' powerful help to their influence. That many of 
them are clearly aware of this is proved by their bold- 
ness and perseverance in resuming ornamental vest- 
ments ; and (as might be expected) that Church which 
has the most influence over women is at the same time 
the one whose vestments are most gorgeous and most 
elaborate. Splendor, however, is not required to make 
a costume impressive. It is enough that it be strikingly 
peculiar, even in simplicity, like the white robe of the 
Dominican friars. 

Costume naturally leads our minds to architecture. 
I am not the first to remark that a house is only a 
cloak of a larger size. The gradation is insensible 
from a coat to a cathedral : first, the soldier's heavy 
cloak which enabled the Prussians to dispense with the 
little tent, then the tent, hut, cottage, house, church, 
cathedral, heavier and larger as we ascend the scale. 
"He has clothed himself with his church," says Mich- 
elet of the priest ; "he has wrapped himself in this 
glorious mantle, and in it he stands in triumphant state. 
The crowd comes, sees, admires. Assuredly, if we 



190 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

judge the man by his covering, he who clothes himself 
with a Notre Dame de Paris, or with a Cologne 
Cathedral, is, to all appearance, the giant of the spirit- 
ual world. What a dwelling such an edifice is, and 
how vast the inhabitant must be ! All proportions 
change ; the eye is deceived and deceives itself again. 
Sublime lights, powerful shadows, all help the illusion. 
The man who in the street looked like a village school- 
master is a prophet in this place. He is transfigured 
bj T these magnificent surroundings ; his heaviness be- 
comes power and majesty ; his voice has formidable 
echoes. Women and children are overawed." 

To a mind that does not analyze but simply receives 
impressions, magnificent architecture is a convincing 
proof that the words of the preacher are true. It 
appears inconceivable that such substantial glories, so 
many thousands of tons of masomy, such forests of 
timber, such acres of lead and glass, all united in one 
harmonious work on which men lavished wealth and 
toil for generations, — it appears inconceivable that 
such a monument can perpetuate an error or a dream. 
The echoing vaults bear witness. Responses come from 
storied window and multitudinous imagery. When the 
old cosmogony is proclaimed to be true in York Minster, 
the scientists sink into insignificance in their modern 
ordinaiy rooms ; when the acolyte rings his bell in 
Rouen Cathedral, and the Host is lifted up, and the 
crowd kneels in silent adoration on the pavement, who 
is to den}' the Real Presence ? Does not every massive 
pillar stand there to affirm sturdily that it is true ; and 
do not the towers outside announce it to field and river, 
and to the verv winds of heaven? 



- PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 191 

The musical culture of women finds its own special 
interest in the vocal and instrumental parts of the 
church service. Women have a direct influence on 
this part of the ritual, and sometimes take an active 
share in it. Of all the arts music is the most closely 
connected with religion, and it is the only one that the 
blessed are believed to practise in a future state. A 
suggestion that angels might paint or carve is so un- 
accustomed that it seems incongruous ; yet the objection 
to these arts cannot be that they eroplo} 7 matter, since 
both poets and painters give musical instruments to the 
angels, — 

"And angels meeting us shall sing 
To their citherns and citoles." 

"Worship naturally becomes musical as it passes from 
the pra} T er that asks for benefits to the expression of 
joyful praise ; and though the austerity of extreme 
Protestantism has excluded instruments and encour- 
aged reading instead of chanting, I am not aware that 
it has ever gone so far as to forbid the singing of 
hymns. 

I have not yet touched upon pulpit eloquence as one 
of the means by which the clergy gain a great ascend- 
ency over women. The truth is that the pulpit is quite 
the most advantageous of all places for any one whc 
has the gift of public speaking. He is placed there far 
more favorably than a Member of Parliament in his 
place in the House, where he is subject to constant and 
contemptuous interruptions from hearers lounging with 
their hats on. The chief advantage is that no one 
present is allowed either to interrupt or to reply ; and 



192 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

this is one reason why some men will not go to church, 
as the} T say, "We may hear our principles misrepre- 
sented and not be permitted to defend them." A 
Bishop, in my hearing, touched upon this very point. 
" People sa3 T ," he remarked, " that a preacher is much 
at his ease because no one is allowed to answer him ; 
but I invite discussion. If any one here present has 
doubts about the soundness of my reasoning, I invite 
him to come to me at the Episcopal Palace, and we 
will argue the question together in my study." This 
sounded unusually liberal, but how the advantages were 
still on the side of the Bishop ! His attack on heresy 
was public. It was uttered with long-practised profes- 
sional eloquence, it was backed by a lofty social position, 
aided by a peculiar and dignified costume, and mightily 
aided also by the architecture of a magnificent cathe- 
dral. The doubter was invited to answer, but not on 
equal terms. The attack was public, the answer was 
to be private, and the heretic was to meet the Bishop 
in the Episcopal Palace, where, again, the power of 
rank and surroundings would be all in the prelate's 
favor. 

Not only are clergymen privileged speakers, in being 
as secure from present contradiction as a sovereign on 
the throne, but they have the grandest of all imaginable 
subjects. In a word, the}* have the subject of Dante, 
— the}' speak to us del Inferno, del Purgatorio, del 
Paradiso. If they have any gift of genius, any power 
of imagination, such a subject becomes a tremendous 
engine in their hands. Imagine the difference between 
a preacher solemnly warning his hearers that the con- 



- PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 193 

sequences of inattention may be everlasting torment, 
and a politician warning the Government that inatten- 
tion may lead to a deficit ! The truth is, that however 
terrible may be the earthly consequences of imprudence 
and of sin, they sink into complete insignificance before 
the menaces of the Church ; nor is there, on the other 
hand, any worldly success that can be proposed as a 
motive comparable to the permanent happiness of 
Paradise. The good and the bad things of this world 
have alike the fatal defect, as subjects for eloquence, 
that they equally end in death ; and as death is near 
to all of us, we see the end to both. The secular 
preacher is like a man who predicts a more or less 
comfortable journey, which comes to the same end in 
any case. A philosophic hearer is not very greatly 
elated by the promise of comforts so soon to be taken 
away, nor is he overwhelmed by the threat of evils 
that can but be temporary. Hence, in all matters 
belonging to this world only, the tone of quiet advice 
is the reasonable and appropriate tone, and it is that 
of the doctor and lawyer ; but in matters of such tre- 
mendous import as eternal happiness and misery the 
utmost energy of eloquence can never be too great for 
the occasion ; so that if a preacher can threaten like 
peals of thunder, and appal like flashes of lightning, he 
may use such terrible gifts without any disproportionate 
excess. On the other hand, if he has any charm of 
language, any brilliancy of imagination, there is noth- 
ing to prevent him from alluring his hearers to the 
paths of virtue by the most lavish and seductive prom- 
ises. In short, his opportunities in both directions are 
13 



194 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

of such a nature that exaggeration is impossible ; and 
all his power, all his charm, are as free to do their 
utmost as an ocean wave in a tempest or the nightingale 
in the summer woods. 

I cannot quit the subject of clerical oratorj^ without 
noticing one of its marked characteristics. The priest 
is not in a position of disinterested impartialit} T , like a 
man of science, who is ready to renounce any doctrine 
when he finds evidence against it. The priest is an 
advocate whose life-long pleading must be in favor of 
the Church as he finds her, and in opposition to her 
adversaries. To attack adversaries is therefore one of 
the recognized duties of his profession ; and if he is not 
a man of uncommon fairness, if he has not an inborn 
love of justice which is rare in human nature, he will 
not only attack his adversaries but misrepresent them. 
There is even a worse danger than simple misrepresen- 
tation. A priest may possibly be a man of a coarse 
temper, and if he is so he will employ the weapons of 
outrage and vituperation, knowing that he can do so 
with impunity. One would imagine that these methods 
must inevitably repel and displease women, but there 
is a very peculiar reason why they seldom have this 
effect. A highly principled woman is usually so ex- 
tremely eager to be on the side of what is right that 
suspension of judgment is most difficult for her. Any 
condemnation uttered by a person she is accustomed 
to trust has her approval on the instant. She cannot 
endure to wait until the crime is proved, but her feel- 
ings of indignation are at once aroused against the 
supposed criminal on the ground that there must be 



PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 195 

clear distinctions between right and wrong. The priest, 
for her, is the good man, — the man on the side of God 
and virtue ; and those whom he condemns are the bad 
men, — the men on the side of the Devil and vice. 
This being so, he may deal with such men as roughly 
as he pleases. Nor have these men the faintest chance 
of setting themselves right in her opinion. She quietly 
closes the avenues of her mind against them ; she de- 
clines to read their books ; she will not listen to their 
arguments. Even if one of them is a near relation 
whose opinions inflict upon her what she calls "the 
deepest distress of mind," she will positively prefer to 
go on suffering such distress until she dies, rather than 
allow him to remove it by a candid exposition of his 
views. She prefers the hostile misrepresentation that 
makes her miserable, to an authentic account of the 
matter that would relieve her anguish. 

Part III. — Association. 

The association of clergymen with ladies in works of 
charity affords continual opportunities for the exercise 
of clerical influence over women. A partnership in 
good works is set up which establishes interesting and 
cordial relations, and when the lad}?- has accomplished 
some charitable purpose she remembers for long after- 
wards the clergyman without whose active assistance 
her project might have fallen to the ground. She sees 
in the clergyman a reflection of her own goodness, and 
she feels grateful to him for lending his masculine 
sense and larger experience to the realization of her 



196 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

ideas. There are other cases of a different nature in 
which the self-esteem of the lady is deeply gratified 
when she is selected by the clergyman as being more 
capable of devoted effort in a sacred cause than women 
of inferior piety and strength of mind. This kind of 
clerical selection is believed to be very influential in 
furthering clerical marriages. The lady is told that 
she will serve the highest of all causes by lending a 
willing ear to her admirer. Every reader will remem- 
ber how thoroughly this idea is worked out in ' ' Jane 
E3're," where St. John urges Jane to marry him on the 
plain ground that she would be a valuable fellow-worker 
with a missionary. Charlotte Bronte was, indeed, so 
strongly impressed with this aspect of clerical influence 
that she injured the best and strongest of her novels 
by an almost wearisome development of that episode. 

Clerical influence is immensely aided by the posses- 
sion of leisure. Without underrating the self-devotion 
of hard-working clergymen (which is all the more honor- 
able to them that they might take life more easily if they 
chose), we see a wide distinction, in point of industry, 
between the average clergyman and the average solici- 
tor, for example. The clergyman has leisure to pay 
calls, to accept many invitations, and to talk in full 
detail about the interests that he has in common with 
his female friends. The solicitor is kept to his office 
by strictly professional work requiring very close appli- 
cation and allowing no liberty of mind. 

Much might be said about the effect of clerical lei- 
sure on clerical manners. Without leisure it is difficult 
to have such quiet and pleasant manners as the clergy 



PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 197 

generally have. Very busy men generally seem pre- 
occupied with some idea of their own which is not 
what you are talking about, but a leisurely man will 
give hospitality to your thought. A busy man wants 
to get away, and fidgets you ; a man of leisure dwells 
with you, for the time, completely. Ladies are exqui- 
sitely sensitive to these differences, and besides, the} r 
are generally themselves persons of leisure. Over- 
worked people often confound leisure with indolence, 
which is a great mistake. Leisure is highly favorable 
to intelligence and good manners ; indolence is stupid, 
from its dislike to mental effort, and ill-bred, from the 
habit of inattention. 

The feeling of women towards custom draws them 
strongly to the clergy, because a priesthood is the in- 
stinctive upholder of ancient customs and ceremonies, 
and steadily maintains external decorum. Women are 
naturally more attracted by custom than we are. A 
few men have an affectionate regard for the sanctities 
of usage, but most men only submit to them from an 
idea that they are generally helpful to the "mainten- 
ance of order ; " and if women could be supposed absent 
from a nation for a time, it is probable that external 
observances of all kinds would be greatly relaxed. 
Women do not merely submit passively to custom ; 
they uphold it actively and energetically, with a degree 
of faith in the perfect reasonableness of it which gives 
them great decision in its defence. It seems to them 
the ultimate reason from which there is no appeal. 
Now, in the life of every organized Church there is 
much to gratify this instinct, especially in those which 



198 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

have been long established. The recurrence of holy 
seasons, the customaiy repetition of certain forms of 
words, the observance at stated intervals of the same 
ceremonies, the adherence to certain prescribed decen- 
cies or splendors of dress, the reservation of sacred 
days on which labor is suspended, give to the religious 
life a charm of customariness which is deeply gratify- 
ing to good, order-loving women. It is said that every 
poet has something feminine in his nature ; and it is 
certainty observable that poets, like women, are ten- 
derly affected by the recurrence of holy seasons, and 
the observance of fixed religious rites. I will only 
allude to Keble's " Christian Year," because in this 
instance it might be objected that the poet was second- 
ary to the Christian ; but the reader will find instances 
of the same sentiment in Ten^-son, as, for example, 
in the profoundly affecting allusions to the return of 
Christmas in " In Memoriam." I could not name an- 
other occupation so closely and visibly bound up with 
custom as the clerical profession, but for the sake of 
contrast I may mention one or two others that are 
completely disconnected from it. The profession of 
painting is an example, and so is that of literature. 
An artist, a •writer, has simply nothing whatever to do 
with custom, except as a private man. He may be an 
excellent and a famous workman without knowing 
Sunda} r from week-day or Easter from Lent. A man 
of science is equally unconnected with traditional 
observances. 

It maj T be a question whether a celibate or a married 
clergy has the greater influence over women. 



PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 199 

There are two sides to this question. The Church of 
Rome is, from the worldly point of view, the most astute 
body of men who have ever leagued themselves together 
in a corporation ; and that Church has decided for celi- 
bacy, rejecting thereby all the advantages to be derived 
from rich marriages and good connections. In a celi- 
bate church the priest has a position of secure dignity 
and independence. It is known from the first that he 
will not marry, so there is no idle and damaging gossip 
about his supposed aspirations after fortune, or tender 
feelings towards beauty. Women can treat him with 
greater confidence than if he were a possible suitor, 
and then can confess to him, which is felt to be difficult 
with a married or a marriageable clergy. By being 
decidedly celibate the clergy avoid the possible loss of 
dignity which might result from allying themselves with 
families in a low social position. They are simply 
priests, and escape all other classification. A married 
man is, as it were, made responsible for the decent 
appearance, the good manners, and the proper conduct 
of three different sets of people. There is the family 
he springs from, there is his wife's family, and, lastly, 
there is the family in his own house. Any one of these 
may drag a man down socially with almost irresistible 
force. The celibate priest is only affected by the family 
he springs from, and is generally at a distance from that. 
He escapes the invasion of his house by a wife's rela- 
tions, who might possibly be vulgar, and, above all, he 
escapes the permanent degradation of a coarse and 
ill-dressed family of his own. No doubt, from the 
Christian point of view, poverty is as honorable as 



200 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

wealth ; but from the worldly point of view its visible 
imperfections are mean, despicable, and even ridiculous. 
In the early days of English Protestants the liberty to 
marry was ruinous to the social position of the clergy. 
They generally espoused servant-girls or " a lady's 
maid whose character had been blown upon, and who 
was therefore forced to give up all hope of catching 
the steward." 1 Queen Elizabeth issued " special orders 
that no clerg3 T man should presume to marry a servant- 
girl without the consent of the master or mistress." 
"One of the lessons most earnestly inculcated on 
every girl of honorable family was to give no encour- 
agement to a lover in orders ; and if any } T oung lady 
forgot this precept she was almost as much disgraced 
as by an illicit amour." The cause of these low mar- 
riages was simply poverty, and it is needless to add 
that they increased the evil. ' ; As children multiplied 
and grew, the household of the priest became more and 
more beggarly. Holes appeared more and more 
plainly in the thatch of his parsonage and in his single 
cassock. His boj^s followed the plough, and his girls 
went out to service." 

When clergj'men can maintain appearances they gain 
one advantage from marriage which increases their in- 
fluence with women. The clerg} T man's wife is almost 
herself in holy orders, and his daughter often takes an 
equally keen interest in ecclesiastical matters. These 
" clergywomen," as they have been called, are valuable 
allies, through whom much may be done that cannot 

1 These quotations (I need hardly say) are from Macaulay's 
History, Chapter III. 



■PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 201 

be effected directly. This is the only advantage on 
the side of marriage, and it is but relative ; for a celi- 
bate clergy has also its female allies who are scarcely 
less devoted ; and in the Church of Rome there are 
great organized associations of women entirety under 
the control of ecclesiastics. Again, there is a la} T 
element in a clergyman's family which brings the world 
into his own house, to the detriment of its religious 
character. The sons of the clergy are often anything 
but clerical in feeling. Thej T are often strongly laic, 
and even sceptical, by a natural reaction from ecclesi- 
asticism. On the whole, therefore, it seems certain 
that an unmarried clergy more easiry maintains both 
its own dignity and the distinction between itself and 
the laity. 

Auricular confession is so well known as a means of 
influencing women that I need scarcely do more than 
mention it ; but there is one characteristic of it which 
is little understood by Protestants. The}- fane}' (judg- 
ing from Protestant feelings of antagonism) that con- 
fession must be felt as a tjTann}-. A Roman Catholic 
woman does not feel it to be an infliction that the 
Church imposes, but a relief that she affords. Women 
are not naturally silent sufferers. They like to talk 
about their anxieties and interests, especially to a 
patient and sympathetic listener of the other sex who 
will give them valuable advice. There is reason to 
believe that a good deal of informal confession is done 
by Protestant ladies ; in the Church of Rome it is more 
systematic and leads to a formal absolution. The sub- 
ject which the speaker has to talk about is that most 



202 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

interesting of all subjects, self. In any other place 
than a confessional to talk about self at any length 
is an error ; in the confessional it is a virtue. The truth 
is that pious Roman Catholic women find happiness in 
the confessional and try the patience of the priests by 
minute accounts of trifling or imaginary sins. No 
doubt confession places an immense power in the hands 
of the Church, but at an incalculable cost of patience. 
It is not felt to weigh unfairly on the laity, because 
the priest who to-day has forgiven your faults will to- 
morrow kneel in penitence and ask forgiveness for his 
own. I do not see in the confessional so much an 
oppressive institution as a convenience for both parties. 
The woman gets what she wants, — an opportunity of 
talking confidentially about herself ; and the priest gets 
what he wants, — an opportunity of learning the secrets 
of the household. 

Nothing has so powerfully awakened the jealousy of 
laymen as this institution of the confessional. The 
reasons have been so fully treated by Michelet and 
others, and are in fact so obvious, that I need not 
repeat them. 

The dislike for priests that is felt by many Conti- 
nental laymen is increased by a cause that helps to win 
the confidence of women. " Observe," the la}Tnen 
say, " with what art the priest dresses so as to make 
women feel that he is without sex, in order that they 
may confess to him more willingly. He removes every 
trace of hair from his face, his dress is half feminine, 
he hides his legs in petticoats, his shoulders under a 
tippet, and in the higher ranks he wears jewelry and 



' PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 203 

silk and lace. A woman would never confess to a 
man dressed as we are, so the wolf puts on sheep's 
clothing." 

Where confession is not the rule the layman's jeal- 
ousy is less acrid and pungent in its expression, but 
it often manifests itself in milder forms. The pen that 
so clearly delineated the Rev. Charles Hone}Taan was 
impelled by a layman's natural and pardonable jeal- 
ousy. A feeling of this kind is often strong in laymen 
of mature years. The} T will say to you in confidence, 
" Here is a man about the age of one of my sons, who 
knows no more concerning the mysteries of life and 
death than I do, who gets what he thinks he knows out 
of a book which is as accessible to me as it is to him, 
and yet who assumes a superiority over me which would 
only be justifiable if I were ignorant and he enlightened. 
He calls me one of his sheep. I am not a sheep rela- 
tively to him. I am at least his equal in knowledge, 
and greatly his superior in experience. Nobody but a 
parson would venture to compare me to an animal (such 
a stupid animal too !) and himself to that animal's mas- 
ter. His one real and effective superiority is that he 
has all the women on his side." 

You poor, doubting, hesitating layman, not half so 
convinced as the ladies of your family, who and what 
are you in the presence of a man who comes clothed 
with the authority of the Church ? If you simply repeat 
what he sa}-s, you are a mere echo, a feeble repetition 
of a great original, like the copy of a famous picture. 
If you try to take refuge in philosophic indifference, 
in silent patience, you will be blamed for moral and 



204 PRIESTS AND WOMEN. 

religious inertia. If you venture to oppose and discuss, 
you will be the bad man against the good man, and as 
sure of condemnation as a murderer when the judge 
is putting on the black cap. There is no resource for 
you but one, and that does not offer a very cheering 
or hopeful prospect. By the exercise of angelic pa- 
tience, and of all the other virtues that have been 
preached by good men from Socrates downwards, you 
may in twenty or thirty years acquire some credit for 
a sort of inferior goodness of your own, — a pinchbeck 
goodness, better than nothing, but not in any way 
comparable to the pure golden goodness of the priest ; 
and when you. come to die, the best that can be hoped 
for your disembodied soul will be mercy, clemency, in- 
dulgence ; not approbation, welcome, or reward. 



APPARENTLY LESS RELIGIOUS. 205 



ESSAY XIV. 

WHY WE AKE APPAKENTLY BECOMING LESS 
EELIGIOUS. 

TT has happened to me on more than one occasion to 
■*■ have to examine papers left by ladies belonging to 
the last generation, who had lived in the manner most_ 
esteemed and respected by the general opinion of their 
time, and who might, without much risk of error, be 
taken for almost perfect models of English gentlewomen 
as they existed before the present scientific age. The 
papers left by these ladies consisted either of memo- 
randa of their private thoughts, or of thoughts by others 
which seemed to have had an especial interest for them. 
I found that all these papers arranged themselves natu- 
rally and inevitably under two heads : either they con- 
cerned family interests and affections, or they were 
distinctly religious in character, like the religious medi- 
tations we find in books of devotion. 

There may be nothing extraordinary in this. Thou- 
sands of other ladies may have left religious memoranda ; 
but consider what a preponderance of religious ideas is 
implied when written thoughts are entirely confined to 
them ! The ladies in question lived in the first half of 
the nineteenth centmy, a period of great intellectual 
ferment, of the most important political and social 
changes, and of wonderful material progress ; but they 



206 WHY WE ARE APPARENTLY 

did not seem to have taken any real interest in these 
movements. The Bible and the commentaries of the 
clergy satisfied not only their spiritual but also their in- 
tellectual needs. They seem to have desired no knowl- 
edge of the universe, or of the probable origin and future 
of the human race, which the Bible did not supply. They 
seem to have cared for no example of human character 
and conduct other than the scriptural examples. 

This restfulness in Biblical history and philosoplry, 
this substitution of the Bible for the world as a subject 
of study and contemplation, this absence of desire to 
penetrate the secrets of the world itself, this want of 
aspiration after any ideal more recent than the earlier 
ages of Christianit} 7 , permitted a much more constant 
and uninterrupted dwelling with what are considered to 
be religious ideas than is possible to any active and 
inquiring mind of the present day. Let it be supposed, 
for example, that a person to whom the Bible was every- 
hing desired information about the origin of the globe, 
and of life upon it ; he would refer to the Book of Gene- 
sis as the only authorit}-, and this reference would have 
the character of a religious act, and he would get credit 
for piety on account of it ; whilst a modern scientific 
student would refer to some great modern paleontolo- 
gist, and his reference would not have the character of 
a religious act, nor bring him any credit for piet} T ; yet 
the prompting curiosity, the desire to know about the 
remote past, would be exactly the same in both cases. 
And I think it may be easily shown that if the modern 
scientific student appears to be less religious than others 
think he ought to be, it is often because he possesses 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 207 

and uses more abundant sources of information than 
those which were accessible to the ancient Jews. It is 
not his fault if knowledge has increased ; he cannot be 
blamed if he goes where information is most copious 
and most exact ; yet his preference for such information 
gives an unsanctified aspect to his studies. The study 
of the most ancient knowledge wears a religious aspect, 
but the study of modern knowledge appears to be non- 
religioas. 

Again, when we come to the cultivation of the ideal- 
izing faculties, of the faculties which do not seek infor- 
mation merely, but some kind of perfection, we find that 
the very complexity of modern life, and the diversity 
of the ideal pleasures and perfections that we modern 
men desire, have a constant tendency to take us outside 
of strictly religious ideals. As long as the writings 
which are held to be sacred supply all that our idealizing 
faculties need, so long will our imaginative powers exer- 
cise themselves in what is considered to be a religious 
manner, and we shall get credit for piet}^ ; but when 
our minds imagine what the sacred writers could not or 
did not conceive, and when we seek help for our imagi- 
native faculty in profane writers, we appear to be less 
religious. So it is with the desire to study and imitate 
high examples of cor- duct and character. There is no 
nobler or more fruitful instinct in man than a desire 
like this, which is possible only to those who are at 
once humble and aspiring. An ancient Jew who had 
this noble instinct could satisfy it by reading the sacred 
books of the Hebrews, and so his aspiration appeared 
to be wholly religious. It is not so with an active- 



208 WHY WE ARE APPARENTLY 

minded young Englishman of the present da}\ He 
cannot find the most inspiriting models amongst the 
ancient Hebrews, for the reason that their life was alto- 
gether so much simpler and more primitive than ours. 
They had nothing that can seriously be called science ; 
they had not any organized industr} T ; they had little 
art, and hardly an}^ secular literature, so that in these 
directions they offer us no examples to follow. Our 
great inspiriting examples in these directions are to be 
found either in the Renaissance or in recent times, and 
therefore in profane biography. From this it follows 
that an active modern mind seems to stud}" and follow 
non-religious examples, and so to differ widely, and for 
the worse, from the simpler minds of old time, who were 
satisfied with the examples they found in their Bibles. 
This appearance is misleading ; it is merely on the sur- 
face ; for if we go deeper and do not let ourselves be 
deceived by the words "sacred" and "profane," we 
shall find that when a simple mind chooses a model 
from a primitive people, and a cultivated one chooses 
a model from an advanced people, and from the most 
advanced class in it, they are both really doing the 
same thing, namely, seeking ideal help of the kind 
which is best for each. Both of them are pursuing the 
same object, — a mental discipline and elevation which 
may be comprised under the general term virtue / the 
only difference being that one is studying examples of 
virtue in the history of the ancient Jews, whilst the 
other finds examples of virtue more to his own special 
purpose in the lives of energetic Englishmen, French- 
men, or Germans. 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 209 

A hundred such examples might be mentioned, for 
every occupation worth following has its own saints 
and heroes ; but I will confine myself to two. The first 
shall be a French gentleman of the eighteenth centuiy, 
to whom life offered in the richest profusion everything 
that can tempt a man to what is considered an excusa- 
ble and even a respectable form of idleness. He had 
an independent fortune, excellent health, a good social 
position, and easy access to the most lively, the most 
entertaining, the most amiable society that ever was, 
namely, that of the intelligent French nobility before 
the Revolution. There is no merit in renouncing what 
we do not enjo} T ; but he enjoyed all pleasant things, and 
yet renounced them for a higher and a harder life. At 
the age of thirty-two he retired to the countr} T , made a 
rule of early rising and kept it, sallied forth from his 
house every morning at five, went and shut himself up 
in an old tower with a piece of bread and a glass of 
water for his breakfast, worked altogether eleven or 
twelve hours a da}' in two sittings, and went to bed at 
nine. This for eight months in the }'ear, regularly, 
the remaining four being employed in scientific and 
administrative work at the Jardin des Plantes. He 
went on working in this way for fort} r years, and in 
the whole course of that time never let pass an ill- 
considered page or an ill-constructed sentence, but 
always did his best, and tried to make himself able to 
do better. 

Such was the great life of Buffon ; and in our own 
time another great life has come to its close, inferior 
to that of Buffon only in this, that as it did not begin 



210 WHY WE ARE APPARENTLY 

in luxury, the first renunciation was not so difficult to 
make. Yet, however austere his beginuings, it is not a 
light or easy thing for a man to become the greatest 
intellectual worker of his time, so that one of his da} T s 
(including eight hours of steady nocturnal labor) was 
equivalent to two or more of our days. No man of his 
time in Europe had so vast a knowledge of literature 
and science in combination ; yet this knowledge was 
accompanied by perfect modesty and by a complete 
indifference to vulgar distinctions and vain successes. 
For many years he was the butt of coarse and malig- 
nant misrepresentation on the part of enemies who 
easily made him odious to a shallow society ; but he 
bore it with perfect dignity, and retained unimpaired 
the tolerance and charity of his nature. His wa} T of 
living was plain and frugal ; he even contented himself 
with narrow dwellings, though the want of space must 
have occasioned frequent inconvenience to a man of 
his pursuits. He scrupulously fulfilled his domestic 
duties, and made use of his medical education in min- 
istering gratuitously to the poor. Such was his cour- 
age that when already advanced in life he undertook 
a gigantic task, requiring twenty years of incessant 
labor ; and such were his industry and perseverance 
that he brought it to a splendidly successful issue. At 
length, after a long life of duty and patience, after 
Dearing calumn} T and ridicule, he was called to endure 
another kind of suffering, — that of incessant plrysical 
pain. This he bore with perfect fortitude, retaining 
to the last his mental serenity, his interest in learning, 
and a high-minded patriotic thoughtfulness for his 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 211 

country and its future, finding means in the midst of 
suffering to dictate long letters to his fellow-citizens 
on political subjects, which, in their calm wisdom, stood 
in the strongest possible contrast to the violent party 
writing of the hour. 

Such was the great life of Littre ; and now consider 
whether he who studies lives like these, and wins vir- 
tue from their austere example, does not occupy his 
thoughts with what would have been considered relig- 
ious aspirations, if these two men, instead of being 
Frenchmen of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 
had happened to be ancient Jews. If it had been pos- 
sible for so primitive a nation as the Jewish to produce 
men of such stead}' industry and so large a culture, we 
should have read the story of their lives in the Jewish 
sacred books, and then it would have been a part of 
the popular religion to stud} T them, whereas now the 
study of such biograph} 7 is held to be non-religious, if 
not (at least in the case of Littre) positively irreligious. 
Yet surely when we think of the virtues which made 
these lives so fruitful, our minds are occupied in a kind 
of religious thought ; for are we not thinking of tem- 
perance, self-discipline, diligence, perseverance, pa- 
tience, charity, courage, hope? Were not these men 
distinguished by their aspiration after higher perfection, 
by a constant desire to use their talents well, and by 
a vigilant care in the emploj^ment of their time ? And 
are not these virtues and these aspirations held to be 
parts of a civilized man's religion, and the best parts? 

The necessit}' for an intellectual expansion be}*ond 
the limits of the Bible was felt very strongly at the 



212 WHY WE ARE APPARENTLY 

time of the Renaissance, and found ample satisfaction 
in the stud} 7 of the Greek and Latin classics. There 
are many reasons why women appear to be more relig- 
ious than men ; and one of them is because women 
study only one collection of ancient writings, whilst 
men have been accustomed to study three ; conse- 
quently that which women study (if such a word is 
applicable to devotional, uncritical reading) occupies 
their minds far more exclusively than it occupies the 
mind of a classical scholar. But, though the intellect- 
ual energies of men were for a time satisfied with clas- 
sical literature, they came at length to look outside of 
that as their fathers had looked outside of the Bible. 
Classical literature was itself a kind of religion, having 
its own sacred books ; and it had also its heretics, — the 
students of nature, — who found nature more interesting 
than the opinions of the Greeks and Romans. Then 
came the second great expansion of the human mind, 
in the midst of which we ourselves are living. The 
Renaissance opened for it a world of mental activity 
which had the inappreciable intellectual advantage of 
lying well outside of the popular beliefs and ideas, so 
that cultivated men found in it an escape from the 
pressure of the uneducated ; but the new scientific 
expansion offers us a region governed by laws of a 
kind peculiar to itself, which protect those who conform 
to them against every assailant. It is a region in 
which authority is unknown, for, however illustrious 
any great man may appear in it, every statement that 
he makes is subject to verification. Here the knowl- 
edge of ancient writers is continually superseded by 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 213 

the better and more accurate knowledge of their suc- 
cessors ; so that whereas in religion and learning the 
most ancient writings are the most esteemed, in science 
it is often the most recent, and even these have no 
authority which may not be called in question freely 
by any student. The new scientific culture is thus 
encouraging a habit of mind different from old habits, 
and which in our time has caused such a degree of 
separation that the most important and the most inter- 
esting of all topics are those upon which we scarcely 
dare to venture for fear of being misunderstood. 

If I had to condense in a short space the various 
reasons why we are apparently becoming less religious, 
I should say that it is because knowledge and feeling, 
embodied or expressed in the sciences and arts, are 
now too fully and too variously developed to remain 
within the limits of what is considered sacred knowl- 
edge or religious emotion. It was possible for them to 
remain well within those limits in ancient times, and it 
is still possible for a mind of very limited activity and 
range to dwell almost entirely in what was known or 
felt at the time of Christ ; but this is not possible for 
an energetic and inquiring mind, and the. consequence 
is that the energetic mind will seem to the other, by 
contrast, to be negligent of holy things, and too much 
occupied with purely secular interests and concerns. 
A great misunderstanding arises from this, which has 
often had a lamentable effect on intercourse between 
relations and friends. Pious ladies, to whom theologi- 
cal writings appear to contain almost everything that 
it is desirable to know, often look with secret misgiving 



214 APPARENTLY LESS RELIGIOUS. 

or suspicion on young men of vigorous intellect who 
cannot rest satisfied with the old knowledge, and what 
such ladies vaguely hear of the speculations of the 
famous scientific leaders inspires them with profound 
alarm. They think that we are becoming less religious 
because theological writings do not occupy the same 
space in our time and thoughts as the}^ do in theirs ; 
whereas, if such a matter could be put to any kind of 
positive test, it would probably be found that we know 
more, even of their own theolog}-, than they do, and 
that, instead of beiug indifferent to the great problems 
of the universe, we have given to such problems an 
amount of careful thought far surpassing, in mental 
effort, their own simple acquiescence. The opinions 
of a thoughtful and studious man in the present day 
have never been lightly come by ; and if he is supposed 
to be less religious than his father or his grandfather it 
may be that his religion is different from theirs, with- 
out being either less earnest or less enlightened. 
There is, however, one point of immense importance 
on which I believe that we really are becoming less 
religious, indeed on that point we seem to be rapidly 
abandoning the religious principle altogether ; but the 
subject is of too much consequence to be treated at 
the end of an Essay. 



REALLY LESS RELIGIOUS. 215 



ESSAY XV. 

HOW WE ARE REALLY BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 

r I ^HE reader may remember how, after the long and 
■*■ unsuccessful siege of Syracuse, the Athenian 
general Mkias, seeing his discouraged troops ill with 
the fever from the marshes, determined to raise the 
siege ; and that, when his soldiers were preparing to 
retreat, and striking their tents for the march, there 
occurred an eclipse of the moon. Nikias, in his anx- 
iety to know what the gods meant by this with reference 
to him and his army, at once consulted a soothsayer, 
who told him that he would incur the Divine anger if 
he did not remain where he was for three times nine 
days. He remained, doing nothing, allowing his troops 
to perish and his ships to be shut up by a line of the 
enemy's vessels chained together across the entrance 
of the port. At length the three times nine days came 
to an end, and what was left of the Athenian army had 
to get out of a situation that had become infinitely more 
difficult during its inaction. The ships tried to get out 
in vain ; the army was able to retreat by land, but 
only to be harassed by the enemy, and finally placed 
in such distress that it was compelled to surrender. 
Most of the remnant died miserably in the old quar- 
ries of S3Tacu.se. 

The conduct of Nikias throughout these events was 



216 HOW WE ARE REALLY 

in the highest degree religious. He was fully con- 
vinced that the gods concerned themselves about him 
and his doings, that they were watching over him, and 
that the eclipse was a communication from them not 
to be neglected without a breach of religious duty. He, 
therefore, in the spirit of the most perfect religions 
faith, which we are compelled to admire for its sin- 
cerity and thoroughness, shut his eyes resolutely to all 
the visible facts of a situation more disastrous every 
day, and attended only to the invisible action of the 
invisible gods, of which nothing could be really known 
by him. For twenty-seven days he went on quietly 
sacrificing his soldiers to his faith, and only moved at 
last when he believed that the gods allowed it. 

In contrast with this, let us ask what we think of an 
eclipse ourselves, and how far any religious emotion, 
determinant of action or of inaction, is connected with 
the phenomenon in our experience. We know, in the 
first place, that eclipses belong to the natural order, 
and we do not feel either grateful to the supernatural 
powers, or ungrateful, with regard to them. Even the 
idea that eclipses demonstrate the power of God is 
hardly likely to occur to us, for we constantly see 
terrestrial objects eclipsed by cast shadows ; and the 
mere falling of a shadow is to us only the natural in- 
terruption of light by the intervention of any opaque 
object. In the true theory of eclipses there is abso- 
lutely no ground whatever for religious emotion, and 
accordingly the phenomenon is now entirely discon- 
nected from religious ideas. The consequence is that 
where the Athenian general had a strong motive for 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 217 

religious emotion, a motive so strong that he sacrificed 
his army to the supposed will of Heaven, a modern 
general in the same situation would feel no emotion 
and make no sacrifice. 

If this process stopped at eclipses the result would 
be of little importance, as eclipses of the celestial bodies 
are not frequently visible, and to lose the opportunity 
of emotion which they present is not a very sensible 
loss. But so far is the process from stopping at eclipses, 
that exactly the same process is going on with regard 
to thousands of other phenomena which are one by one, 
yet with increasing rapidity, ceasing to be regarded as 
special manifestations of Divine will, and beginning to 
be regarded as a part of that order of nature with 
which, to quote Professor Huxley's significant language, 
' ' nothing interferes . " Ever}^ one of these transferrences 
from supernatural government to natural order deprives 
the religious sentiment of one special cause or motive 
for its own peculiar kind of emotion, so that we are 
becoming less and less accustomed to such emotion (as 
the opportunities for it become less frequent) , and more 
and more accustomed to accept events and phenomena 
of all kinds as in that order of nature "with which 
nothing interferes." 

This single mental conception of the unfailing regu- 
larity of nature is doing more in our time to affect the 
religious condition of thoughtful people than could be 
effected by many less comprehensive conceptions. 

It has often been said, not untruly, that merely nega- 
tive arguments have little permanent influence over the 
opinions of men, and that institutions which have been 



218 HOW WE ARE REALLY 

temporarily overthrown by negation will shortly be set 
up again, and flourish in their old vigor, unless some- 
thing positive can be found to supply their place. But 
here is a doctrine of a most positive kind. " The order 
of nature is invariably according to regular sequences." 
It is a doctrine which cannot be proved, for we cannot 
follow all the changes which have ever taken place in 
the universe ; but, although incapable of demonstration, 
it may be accepted until something happens to disprove 
it; and it is accepted, with the most absolute faith, by 
a constantly increasing number of adherents. 

To show how this doctrine acts in diminishing re- 
ligious emotion by taking away the opportunity for it, 
let me narrate an incident which really occurred on a 
French line of railway in the winter of 1882. The line, 
on which I had travelled a few days before, passes 
between a river and a hill. The river has a rocky bed 
smd is torrential in winter ; the hill is densely covered 
with a pine forest coming down to the side of the line. 
The year 1882 had been the rainiest known in France 
for two centuries, and the roots of the trees on the edge 
of this pine forest had been much loosened by the rain. 
In consequence of this, two large pine-trees fell across 
the railway early one morning, and soon afterwards a 
train approached the spot b}^ the dim light of early 
dawn. There was a curve just before the engine 
reached the trees, and it had come rapidly for several 
miles down a decline. The driver reversed his steam, 
the engine and tender leaped over the trees, and then 
went over the embankment to a place within six feet 
of the rapid river. The carriages remained on the line, 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 219 

but were much broken. Nobody was killed ; nobody 
was seriously injured. The remarkable escape of the 
passengers was accounted for as follows by the religious 
people in the neighborhood. There happened to be a 
priest in the train, and at the time when the shock took 
place he made what is called "a pious ejaculation." 
This, it was said, had saved the lives of the passengers. 
In the ages of faith this explanation would have -been 
received without question ; but the notion of natural 
sequences — Professor Huxle3 7 's "order with which 
nothing interferes " — had obtained such firm hold on 
the minds of the townsmen generally that they said the 
priest was trying to make ecclesiastical capital out of 
an occurrence easily explicable by natural causes. 
They saw nothing supernatural either in the produc- 
tion of the accident or its comparative harmlessness. 
The trickling of much water had denuded the roots of 
the trees, which fell because they could not stand |rith. 
insufficient roothold ; the lives of the passengers were 
saved because the} 7 did not happen to be in the most 
shattered carriage ; and the men on the engine escaped 
because they fell on soft ground, made softer still by 
the rain. It was probable, too, they said, that if any 
beneficent supernatural interference had taken place it 
would have maintained the trees in an erect position, by 
preventive miracle, and so spared the slight injuries 
which really were inflicted, and which, though treated 
very lightly by others because there were neither deaths 
nor amputations, still caused suffering to those who had 
to bear them. 

Now if we go a little farther into the effects of this 



220 HOW WE ARE REALLY 

accident on the minds of the people who shared in it, 
or whose friends had been imperilled by it, we shall 
see very plainly the effect of the modern belief in the 
regularity of natural sequences. Those who believed 
in supernatural intervention would offer thanksgivings 
when they got home, and probably go through some 
special religious thanksgiving services for many days 
afterwards ; those who believed in the regularity of 
natural sequences would simply feel glad to have es- 
caped, without any especial sense of gratitude to super- 
natural powers. So much for the effect as far as 
thanksgiving is concerned ; but there is another side 
of the matter at least equalty important from the re- 
ligious point of view, — that of prayer. The believers 
in supernatural interference would probably, in all their 
future railway journe3 T s, pray to be super naturally pro- 
tected in case of accident, as they had been in 1882 ; 
but the believers in the regularity of natural sequences 
would only hope that no trees had fallen across the 
line, and feel more than usually anxious after long sea- 
sons of rainy weather. Can there be a doubt that the 
priest's opinion, that he had won safety by a pious 
ejaculation, was highly favorable to his religious activity 
afterwards, whilst the opinion of the believers in " the 
natural order with which nothing interferes " was un- 
favorable both to praj T er and thanksgiving in connec- 
tion with railway travelling ? 

Examples of this kind might easily be multiplied, for 
there is hardly any enterprise that men undertake, how- 
ever apparently unimportant, which cannot be regarded 
both from the points of view of naturalism and super- 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 221 

naturalism ; and in eveiy case the naturalist manner 
of regarding the enterprise leads men to stud}' the 
probable influence of natural causes, whilst the super- 
naturalist opinion leads them to propitiate supernatural 
powers. Now, although some new sense may come to 
be attached to the word " religion" in future ages, so 
that it may come to mean scientific thoroughness, intel- 
lectual ingenuousness, or some other virtue that may be 
possessed by a pure naturalist, the word has always 
been understood, down to the present time, to imply 
a constant dependence upon the supernatural ; and when 
I say that we are becoming less religious, I mean that 
from our increasing tendency to refer everjiMng to 
natural causes the notion of the supernatural is much 
less frequently present in our minds than it was in the 
minds of our forefathers. Even the clergj' themselves 
seem to be following the laity towards the belief in 
natural law, at least so far as matter is concerned. 
The Bishop of Melbourne, in 1882, declined to order 
prayers for rain, and gave his reason honestly, which 
was that material phenomena were under the control 
of natural law, and would not be changed in answer to 
prayer. The Bishop added that prayer should be con- 
fined to spiritual blessings. Without disputing the 
soundness of this opinion, we cannot help perceiving 
that if it were generally received it would put an end 
to one half of the religious activity of the human race ; 
for half the prayers and half the thanksgivings ad- 
dressed to the supernatural powers are for material 
benefits only. It is possible that, in the future, re- 
ligious people will cease to pray for health, but take 



222 HOW WE ARE REALLY 

practical precautions to preserve it ; that they will cease 
to pray for prosperity, but stucty the natural laws which 
govern the wealth of nations ; that they will no longer 
pray for the national fleets and armies, but see that they 
are well supplied and intelligently commanded. All 
this and much more is possible ; but when it comes to 
pass the world will be less religious than it was when 
men believed that every pestilence, every famine, every 
defeat, was a chastisement specially, directly, and in- 
tentionally inflicted by an angty Deity. Even now, 
what an immense step has been made in this direction ! 
In the fearful description of the pestilence at Florence, 
given with so much detail b} T Boccaccio, he speaks of 
4 ' l'ira di Dio a punire la iniquita degli uomini con 
quella pestilenza ; " and he specially implies that those 
who sought to avoid the plague by going to healthier 
places in the county deceived themselves in supposing 
that the wrath of God would not follow them whither- 
soever they went. That is the old belief expressing 
itself in pra3-ers and humiliations. It is still recognized 
officially. If the plague could occur in a town on the 
whole so well cared for as modern London, the language 
of Boccaccio would still be used in the official public 
prayers ; but the active-minded practical citizens would 
be thinking how to destroy the germs, how to purify 
air and water. An instance of this divergence occurred 
after the Egyptian war of 1882. The Archbishop of 
York, after the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, ordered thanks- 
givings to be offered in the churches, on the ground that 
God was in Sir Garnet Wolseley's camp and fought 
with him against the Eg} 7 ptians, which was a survival 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 223 

of the antique idea that national deities fought with the 
national armies. On this a Member of Parliament, 
Mr. George Palmer, said to his constituents in a public 
meeting at Eeading, " At the same time I cannot agree 
with the prayers that have been made in churches. 
Though I respect the consciences of other men, I must 
say that it was not by Divine interference, but from the 
stuff of which our army was made and our great iron- 
clads, that victory was achieved." I do not quote this 
opinion for any originality in itself, as there have 
always been men who held that victory was a necessary 
result of superior military efficiency, but I quote it as 
a valuable test of the change in general opinion. It is 
possible that such views may have been expressed in 
private in all ages of the world ; but I doubt if in any 
age preceding ours a public man, at the very time when 
he was cultivating the good graces of his electors, would 
have refused to the national Deity a special share in a 
military triumph. To an audience imbrued with the 
old conception of incessant supernatural interferences, 
the doctrine that a victory was a natural result would 
have sounded impious ; and such an audience, if any 
one had ventured to say what Mr. Palmer said, would 
have received him with a burst of indignation. But 
Mr. Palmer knew the tendencies of the present age, 
and was quite correct in thinking that he might safely 
express his views. His hearers were not indignant, 
they were not even grave and silent, as Englishmen are 
when they simply disapprove, but the} T listened will- 
ingly, and marked their approbation by laughter and 
cheers. Even a clergyman may hold Mr. Palmer's 



224 HOW WE ARE REALLY 

opinion. Soon after his speech at Reading the Rev. H. 
R. Haweis said the same thing in the pulpit. " Few- 
people," he said, u really doubt that we have conquered 
the Egyptians, not because we were in the right and 
they were in the wrong, but because we had the heav- 
iest hand." The preacher went on to say that the idea 
of God fighting on one side more than another in par- 
ticular battles seemed to him to be a Pagan or at most 
a Jewish one. How different was the old sentiment as 
expressed by Macaulay in the stirring ballad of Ivry ! 
' ' We of the religion " had no doubt about the Divine 
interference in the battle, 

" For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the 
slave, 
And mocked the counsel of the wise, and the valor of the brave ; 
Then glory to his holy name from whom all glories are, 
And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre ! " 

The way in which the great mental movement of our 
age towards a more complete recognition of natural 
order is affecting human intercourse may be defined in 
a few words. If the movement were at an equal rate 
of advance for all civilized people they would be per- 
fectly agreed amongst themselves at any one point of 
time, as it would be settled which events were natural 
in their origin and which were due to the interposition 
of Divine or diabolical agency. Living people would 
differ in opinion from their predecessors, but they would 
not differ from each other. The change, however, 
though visible and important, is not by any means 
uniform, so that a guest sitting at dinner may have on 
his right hand a lady who sees supernatural interfer- 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 225 

ences in many things, and on his left a student of 
science who is firmly convinced that there are no super- 
natural interferences in the present, - and that there 
never have been any in the past. Private opinion, out 
of which public opinion slowly and gradually forms 
itself, is in our time in a state of complete anarchy, be- 
cause two opposite doctrines are held loosely, and one 
or the other is taken up as it happens to seem appro- 
priate. The interpositions of Providence are recognized 
or rejected according to political or personal bias. The 
French Imperialists saw the Divine vengeance in the 
death of Gambetta, whilst in their view the death of 
Napoleon III. was the natural termination of his dis- 
ease, and that of the Prince Imperial a simple accident, 
due to the carelessness of his English companions. 
Personal bias shows itself in the belief, often held by 
men occupying positions of importance, that they are 
necessary, at least for a time, to fulfil the intentions 
of Providence. Napoleon III. said in a moment of 
emotion, " So long as I am needed I am invulnerable ; 
but when my hour comes I shall be broken like glass ! " 
Even in private life a man will sometimes think, " I 
am so necessary to my wife and family that Providence 
will not remove me," though every newspaper reports 
the deaths of fathers who leave their families destitute. 
Sometimes men believe that Providence takes the same 
view of their enterprises that they themselves take ; and 
when a great enterprise is drawing near to its termina- 
tion they feel assured that supernatural power will pro- 
tect them till it is quite concluded, but they believe 
that the enterprises of other men are exposed to all 
15 



226 HOW WE ARE REALLY 

the natural risks. When Mr. Gifford Palgrave was 
wrecked in the sea of Oman, he was for some time in 
an open boat, and thus describes his situation: "All 
depended on the steerage, and on the balance and sup- 
port afforded by the oars, and even more still on the 
Providence of Him who made the deep ; nor indeed 
could I get myself to think that He had brought me thus 
far to let me drown just at the end of nry journey, and 
in so ver} T unsatisfactory a way too ; for had we then 
gone down, what news of the event off Sowadah would 
ever have reached home, or when? — so that altogether 
I felt confident of getting somehow or other on shore, 
though by what means I did not exactly know." Here 
the writer thinks of his own enterprise as deserving 
Divine solicitude, but does not attach the same impor- 
tance to the humbler enterprises of the six passengers 
who went down with the vessel. I cannot help think- 
ing, too, of the poor passenger Ibraheem, who swam to 
the boat and begged so piteously to be taken in, when 
a sailor ' ' loosened his grasp by main force and flung 
him back into the sea, where he disappeared forever." 
Neither can I forget the four who imprudently plunged 
from the boat and perished. We may well believe that 
these lost ones would have been unable to write such 
a delightful and instructive book as Mr. Palgrave's 
" Travels in Arabia," yet they must have had their own 
humble interests in life, their own little objects and 
enterprises. 

The calculation that Providence would spare a trav- 
eller towards the close of a long journey may be mis- 
taken, but it is pious ; it affords an opportunity for the 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 227 

exercise of devout emotion which the scientific thinker 
would miss. If Mr. Herbert Spencer had been placed 
in the same situation he would, no doubt, have felt the 
most perfect confidence that the order of nature would 
not be disturbed, that even in such a turmoil of winds 
and waters the laws of buoyancy and stability would be 
observed in every motion of the boat to the millionth 
of an inch ; but he would not have considered himself 
likely to escape death on account of the important 
nature of his undertakings. Mr. Spencer's way of 
judging the situation as one of equal peril for himself 
and his humble companions would have been more 
reasonable, but at the same time he would have lost 
that opportunity for special and personal gratitude 
which Mr. Palgrave enjoyed when he believed himself 
to be supernaturally protected. The curious incon- 
sistency of the common French expression, " C'est un 
hasard providentiel " is another example of the present 
state of thought on the question. A Frenchman is 
upset from a carriage, breaks no bones, and stands up, 
exclaiming, as he dusts himself, " It was un hasard 
vraiment providentiel that I was not lamed for life." 
It is plain that if his escape was providential it could 
not be accidental at the same time, yet in spite of the 
obvious inconsistency of his expression there is piety 
in his choice of an adjective. 

The distinction, as it has usually been understood 
hitherto, between religious and non-religious explana- 
tions of what happens, is that the religious person be- 
lieves that events happen by supernatural direction, 
and he is only thinking religiously so long as he 



228 HOW WE ARE REALLY 

thinks in that manner ; whilst the non-religious theory- 
is that events happen b} 7 natural sequence, and so long 
as a person thinks in this manner, his mind is acting 
non-religiously, whatever may be his religious profes- 
sion. ' ' To study the universe as it is manifested to 
us ; to ascertain by patient inquiry the order of the 
manifestations ; to discover that the manifestations are 
connected with one another after regular ways in time 
and space ; and, after repeated failures, to give up as 
futile the attempt to understand the power manifested, 
is condemned as irreligious. And meanwhile the char- 
acter of religious is claimed by those who figure to 
themselves a Creator moved by motives like their own ; 
who conceive themselves as seeing through His designs, 
and who even speak of Him as though He laid plans to 
outwit the Devil ! " 

Yes, this is a true account of the way in which the 
words irreligious and religious have always been used, 
and there does not appear to be any necessit} 7 for alter- 
ing their signification. Every event which is trans- 
ferred, in human opinion, from supernatural to natural 
action is transferred from the domain of religion 
to that of science ; and it is because such transfer- 
ences have been so frequent in our time that we are 
becoming so much less religious than our forefathers 
were. In how many things is the modern man per- 
fectly irreligious ! He is so in everything that relates 
to applied science, to steam, telegraphy, photography, 
metallurgy, agriculture, manufactures. He has not 
the slightest belief in spiritual intervention, either for 
or against him, in these material processes. He is 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 229 

beginning to be equally irreligious in government. 
Modern politicians have been accused of thinking that 
God cannot govern, but that is not a true account 
of their opinion. What they really think is that 
government is an application of science to the direc- 
tion of national life, in which no invisible powers will 
either thwart a ruler in that which he does wisely, or 
shield him from the evil consequences of his errors. 

But though we are less religious than our ancestors 
because we believe less in the interferences of the super- 
natural, do we deserve censure for our way of under- 
standing the world? Certainly not. Was Nikias a 
proper object of praise because the eclipse seen by him 
at S} T racuse seemed a warning from the gods ; and was 
Wolseley a proper object of blame because the comet 
seen by him on the Egyptian plain was without a Divine 
message? Both these opinions are quite outside of 
merit, although the older opinion was in the highest 
degree religious, and the later one is not religious in the 
least. Such changes simply indicate a gradual revolu- 
tion in man's conception of the universe, which is the 
result of more accurate knowledge. So why not accept 
the fact, why not admit that we have really become 
less religious? Possibly we have a compensation, a 
gain equivalent to our loss. If the gods do not speak 
to us by signs in the heavens ; if the entrails of victims 
and the flight of birds no longer tell us when to march 
to battle and where to remain inactive in our tents ; if 
the oracle is silent at Delos, and the ark lost to Jeru- 
salem ; if we are pilgrims to no shrine ; if we drink of 
no sacred fountain and plunge into no holy stream ; if 



230 HOW WE ARE REALLY 

all the special sanctities once reverenced by humanity 
are unable any longer to awaken our dead enthusiasm, 
have we gained nothing in exchange for the many 
religious excitements that we have lost? Yes, we have 
gained a keener interest in the natural order, and a 
knowledge of it at once more accurate and more exten- 
sive, a gain that Greek and Jew might well have 
envied us, and which a few of their keener spirits most 
ardently desired. Our passion for natural knowledge 
is not a devout emotion, and therefore it is not religious ; 
but it is a noble and a fruitful passion nevertheless, and 
by it our eyes are opened. The good Saint Bernard 
had his own saintly qualities ; but for us the qualities 
of a De Saussure are not without their worth. Saint 
Bernard, in the perfection of ancient piety, travelling 
a whole day by the lake of Geneva without seeing it, 
too much absorbed by devout meditation to perceive 
anything terrestrial, was blinded by his piety, and might 
with equal profit have stayed in his monastic cell. De 
Saussure was a man of our own time. Never, in his 
writings, do you meet with an}' allusion to supernatural 
interferences (except once or twice in pity for popular 
superstitions) ; but fancy De Saussure passing the lake 
of Geneva, or any other work of nature, without seeing 
it ! His life was spent in the continual study of the 
natural world ; and this stud}' was to him so vigorous 
an exercise for the mind, and so strict a discipline, that 
he found in it a means of moral and even of physical 
improvement. There is no trace in his writings of what 
is called devout emotion, but the bright light of intelli- 
gent admiration illumines every page ; and when he 



BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS. 231 

came to die, if he could not look back, like Saint Ber- 
nard, upon what is especially supposed to be a religious 
life, he could look back upon many years wisely and 
well spent in the study of that nature of which Saint 
Bernard scarcely knew more than the mule that carried 
him. 



232 UNRECOGNIZED UNTRUTH. 



ESSAY XVI. 

ON AN UNRECOGNIZED FORM OF UNTRUTH. 

TN the art of painting there are two opposite ways of 
■*- dealing with natural color. It may be intensified, 
or it may be translated by tints of inferior chromatic 
force. In either case the picture may be perfectly 
harmonious, provided only that the same principle of 
interpretation be consistently followed throughout. 

The first time that I became acquainted with the 
first of these two methods of interpretation was in my 
youth, when I met with a Scottish painter who has since 
become eminent in his art. He was painting studies 
from nature ; and I noticed that whenever in the natural 
object there was a trace of dull gold, as in some lichen, 
he made it a brighter gold, and whenever there was a 
little rusty red he made it a more vivid red. So it was 
with every other tint. His eye seemed to become ex- 
cited by every hue, and he translated it by one of 
greater intensity and power. 

Now that is a kind of exaggeration which is very 
commonly recognized as a departure from the sober 
truth. People complain that the sky is too blue, the 
fields too green, and so on. 

Afterwards I saw French painters at work, and I 
noticed that they (in those days) interpreted natural 
color by an intentional lowering of the chromatic force. 



UNRECOGNIZED UNTRUTH. 233 

When they had to deal with the splendors of autumnal 
woods against a blue sky they interpreted the azure b}^ 
a blue-gray, and the flaming gold hy a dull russet. 
They even refused themselves the more quiet bright- 
ness of an ordinary wheat-field, and translated the 
yellow of the wheat by an earthy brown. 

Unlike falsehood by exaggeration, this other kind of 
falsehood (by diminution) is very seldom recognized as 
a departure from the truth. Such coloring as this 
French coloring excited but few protests, and indeed 
was often praised for being " modest" and " subdued." 

Both systems are equally permissible in the fine arts, 
if consistently followed, because in art the unity and 
harmony of the work are of greater importance than 
the exact imitation of nature. It is not as an art-critic 
that I should have any fault to find with a well-under- 
stood and thoroughly consistent conventionalism in the 
interpretation of nature ; but the two kinds of falsity 
we have noticed are constantly found in action outside 
of the fine arts, and yet only one of them is recognized 
in its true character, the other being esteemed as a proof 
of modesty and moderation. 

The general opinion, in our own country, condemns 
falsehood by exaggeration, but it does not blame false- 
hood by diminution. Overstatement is regarded as a 
vice, and understatement as a sort of modest virtue, 
whilst in fact they are both untruthful, exactly in the 
degree of their departure from perfect accuracy. 

If a man states his income as being larger than it 
really is, if he adopts a degree of ostentation which 
(though he ma} r be able to pay for it) conveys the idea 



234 UNRECOGNIZED UNTRUTH. 

of more ample means than he really possesses, and if 
we find out afterwards what his income actually is, we 
condemn him as an untruthful person ; but lying by 
diminution with reference to money matters is looked 
upon simply as modesty. 

I remember a most respectable English family who 
had this modesty in perfection. It was their great 
pleasure to represent themselves as being much less 
rich than they really were. Whenever they heard of 
anybody with moderate or even narrow means, they 
pretended to think that he had quite an ample income. 
If you mentioned a man with a family, straggling on 
a pittance, they would say he was " very comfortably 
provided for," and if you spoke of another whose ex- 
penses were the ordinary expenses of gentlemen, they 
wondered 03- what inventions of extravagance he could 
get through so much mone} T . They themselves pre- 
tended to spend much less than they really spent, and 
they always affected astonishment when they heard 
how much it cost other people to live exactly in their 
own way. They considered that this was modesty ; but 
was it not just as untruthful as the commoner vice of 
assuming a style more showy than the means warrant? 

In France and Italy the departure from the truth is 
almost invariably in the direction of overstatement, un- 
less the speaker has some distinct purpose to serve by 
adopting the opposite method, as when he desires to 
depreciate the importance of an enemy. In England 
people habitually understate, and the remarkable thing 
is that the} T believe themselves to be strictly truthful in 
doing so. The word "lying" is too harsh a term to 



UNRECOGNIZED UNTRUTH. 235 

be applied either to the English or the Continental 
habit in this matter ; but it is quite fair to say that 
both of them miss the truth, one in falling short of it, 
the other in going beyond it. 

An English family has seen the Alps for the first 
time. A young lady says Switzerland is "nice;" a 
young gentleman has decided that it is "jolly." This 
is what the habit of understatement ma} T bring us down 
to, — absolute inadequacy. The Alps are not "nice," 
and they are not "jolly;" far more powerful adjec- 
tives are only the precise truth in this instance. The 
Alps are stupendous, overwhelming, magnificent, sub- 
lime. A Frenchman in similar circumstances will be 
embarrassed, not by any timidity about using a suffi- 
ciently forcible expression, but because he is eager to 
exaggerate ; and one scarcely knows how to exaggerate 
the tremendous grandeur of the finest Alpine scenery. 
He will have recourse to eloquent phraseology, to loud- 
ness of voice, and finally, when he feels that these are 
still inadequate, he will employ energetic gesture. I 
met a Frenchman who tried to make me comprehend 
how many English people there were at Cannes in 
winter. " II y en a — des Anglais — il y en a," — then 
he hesitated, whilst seeking for an adequate expression. 
At last, throwing out both his arms, he cried, " 11 y en 
a plus qu'en Angleterre!" 

The English love of understatement is even more 
visible in moral than in material things. If an Eng- 
lishman has to describe any person or action that is 
particularly admirable on moral grounds, he will gen- 
erally renounce the attempt to be true, and substitute 



236 UNRECOGNIZED UNTRUTH. 

for the high and inspiring truth some quiet little con- 
ventional expression that will deliver him from what 
he most dreads, — the appearance of any noble enthu- 
siasm. It does not occur to him that this inadequacy, 
this insufficiency of expression, is one of the forms of 
untruth ; that to describe noble and admirable conduct 
in commonplace and non-appreciative language is to 
pay tribute of a kind especially acceptable to the Fa- 
ther of Lies. If we suppose the existence of a modern 
Mephistopheles watching the people of our own time and 
pleased with every kind of moral evil, we ma} r readily 
imagine how gratified he must be to observe the moral 
indifference which uses exactly the same terms for ordi- 
nary and heroic virtue, which never rises with the occa- 
sion, and which always seems to take it for granted 
that there are neither noble natures nor high purposes 
in the world. The dead mediocrity of common talk, 
too timid and too indolent for any expression equiva- 
lent either to the glory of external nature or the intel- 
lectual and moral grandeur of great and excellent men, 
has driven man} 7 of our best minds from conversation 
into literature, because in literature it is not thought 
extraordinary for a man to express himself with a de- 
gree of force and clearness equivalent to the energ} T of 
his feelings, the accuracy of his knowledge, and the 
importance of his subject. The habit of using inade- 
quate expression in conversation has led to the strange 
result that if an Englishman has any power of thought, 
any living interest in the great problems of human des- 
tiny, you will know hardly anything of the real action 
of his mind unless he becomes an author. He dares 



UNRECOGNIZED UNTRUTH. 237 

not express any high feelings in conversation, because 
he dreads what Stuart Mill called the "sneering de- 
preciation" of them; and if such feelings are strong 
enough in hirn to make expression an imperative want, 
he has to utter them on paper. By a strange result 
of conventionalism, a man is admired for using lan- 
guage of the utmost clearness and force in literature, 
whilst if he talked as vigorously as he wrote (except, 
perhaps, in extreme privac} 7 and even secrecj 7 with one 
or two confidential companions) he would be looked 
upon as scarcely civilized. This may be one of the 
reasons why English literature, including the peri- 
odical, is so abundant in quantity and so full of energy. 
It is a mental outlet, a derivatif. 

The kind of untruthfulness which may be called un- 
truthfulness by inadequacy causes many strong and 
earnest minds to keep aloof from general society, which 
seems to them insipid. They find frank and clear ex- 
pression in books, they find it even in newspapers and 
reviews, but they do not find it in social intercourse. 
This deficiency drives many of the more intelligent of 
our countrymen into the strange and perfectly unnatural 
position of receiving ideas almost exclusively through 
the medium of print, and of communicating them only 
by writing. I remember an Englishman of great learn- 
ing and ability who lived almost entirely in that manner. 
He received his ideas through books and the learned 
journals, and whenever any thought occurred to him 
he wrote it immediately on a slip of paper. In society 
he was extremely absent, and when he spoke it was in 
an apologetic and timidly suggestive manner, as if he 



238 UNRECOGNIZED UNTRUTH. 

were always afraid that what he had to say might not 
be interesting to the hearer, or might even appear ob- 
jectionable, and as if he were quite ready to withdraw 
it. He was far too anxious to be well-behaved ever to 
venture on any forcible expression of opinion or to 
utter any noble sentiment ; and yet his convictions on 
all important subjects were very serious, and had been 
arrived at after deep thought, and he was capable of 
real elevation of mind. His writings are the strongest 
possible contrast to his oral expression of himself. 
They are bold in opinion, very clear and decided in 
statement, and full of well-ascertained knowledge. 



AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 239 



ESSAY XVII. 

ON A REMARKABLE ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 

IN De Tocqueville's admirable book on "Democracy 
in America" there is an interesting chapter on the 
behavior of Englishmen to each other when they meet 
in a foreign country : — 

" Two Englishmen meet by chance at the antipodes; they 
are surrounded by foreigners whose language and mode of 
life are hardly known to them. 

" These two men begin by studying each other very curi- 
ously and with a kind of secret uneasiness ; they then turn 
away, or, if they meet, they are careful to speak only with a 
constrained and absent air, and to say things of little impor- 
tance. 

"And yet they know nothing of each other; they have 
never met, and suppose each other to be perfectly honorable. 
Why, then, do they take such pains to avoid intercourse? " 

De Tocqueville was a very close observer, and I 
hardly know a single instance in which his faculty of 
observation shows itself in greater perfection. In his 
terse style of writing every word tells ; and even in my 
translation, unavoidably iuferior to the original, you 
actually see the two Englishmen and the minute details 
of their behavior. 

Let me now introduce the reader to a little scene at 
a foreign table d'hote, as described with great skill and 



240 AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 

truth by a well-known English novelist, Miss Betham- 
Edwards : — 

"The time, September; the scene, a table d'hote dinner 
in a much-frequented French town. For the most part 
nothing can be more prosaic than these daily assemblies of 
English tourists bound for Switzerland and the South, and a 
light sprinkling of foreigners, the two elements seldom or 
never blending; a visitant from another planet might, indeed, 
suppose that between English and French-speaking people 
lay such a gulf as divides the blond New Englander from 
the swarth African, so icy the distance, so unbroken the 
reserve. Nor is there anything like cordiality between the 
English themselves. Our imaginary visitant from Jupiter 
would here find matter for wonder also, and would ask him- 
self the reason of this freezing reticence among the English 
fellowship. What deadly feud of blood, caste, or religion 
could thus keep them apart? Whilst the little knot of Gal- 
lic travellers at the farther end of the table straightway fall 
into friendliest talk, the long rows of Britons of both sexes 
and all ages speak only in subdued voices and to the mem- 
bers of their own family. ' ' 

Next, let me give an account of a personal experi- 
ence in a Parisian hotel. It was a little, unpretending 
establishment that I liked for its quiet and for the hon- 
est cookery. There was a table clliote, frequented by 
a few French people, generally from the provinces, and 
once there came some English visitors who had found 
out the merits of the little place. It happened that I 
had been on the Continent a long time without revisit- 
ing England, so when my fellow-countrymen arrived I 
had foolish feelings of pleasure on finding myself 
amongst them, and spoke to them in our common 
English tongue. The effect of this bold experiment 



AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 241 

was extremely curious, and to me, at the time, almost 
inexplicable, as I had forgotten that chapter by De 
Tocqueville. The new-comers were two or three young 
men and one in middle life. The young men seemed 
to be reserved more from timidity than pride. They 
were quite startled and frightened when spoken to, and 
made answer with grave brevity, as if apprehensive of 
committing themselves to some compromising state- 
ment. With an audacity acquired by habits of inter- 
course with foreigners, I spoke to the older Englishman. 
His way of putting me down would have been a charm- 
ing study for a novelist. His manner resembled noth- 
ing so much as that of a dignified English minister, — 
Mr. Gladstone for example, when he is questioned in 
the House by some young and presumptuous member 
of the Opposition. A few brief words were vouchsafed 
to me, accompanied by an expression of countenance 
which, if not positively stern, was intentionally divested 
of everything like interest or sympathy. It then began 
to dawn upon me that perhaps this Englishman was 
conscious of some august social superiority ; that he 
might even know a lord ; and I thought, " If he does 
really know a lord we are very likely to hear his lord- 
ship's name." My expectation was not fulfilled to the 
letter, but it was quite fulfilled in spirit ; for in talking 
to a Frenchman (for me to hear) our Englishman 
shortly boasted that he knew an English duchess, 
giving her name and place of abode. " One day when 

I was at House I said to the Duchess of ," 

and he repeated what he had said to Her Grace ; but 
it would have no interest for the reader, as it probably 
16 



242 AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 

had none for the great lad} 7 herself. Shade of Thack- 
era} T ! wiry wast thou not there to add a paragraph to 
the "Book of Snobs"? 

The next day came another Englishman of about 
fifty, who distinguished himself in another way. He 
did not know a duchess, or, if he did, we were not 
informed of his good fortune ; but he assumed a won- 
derful air of superiority to his temporary surroundings, 
that filled me, I must sa}', with the deepest respect and 
awe. The impression he desired to produce was that 
he had never before been in so poor a little place, and 
that our society was far beneath what he was accus- 
tomed to. He criticised things disdainfully, and when 
I ventured to speak to him he condescended, it is true, 
to enter into conversation, but in a manner that seemed 
to sa} T , " Who and what are you that you dare to speak 
to a gentleman like me, who am, as you must perceive, 
a person of wealth and consideration ? " 

This account of our English visitors is certainly not 
exaggerated by anj T excessive sensitiveness on my part. 
Paris is not the Desert ; and one who has known it for 
thirty years is not dependent for societ} 1 - on a chance 
arrival from be}T>nd the sea. For me these English- 
men were but actors in a play, and perhaps they af- 
forded me more amusement with their own peculiar 
manners than if they had been pleasant and amiable. 
One result, however, was inevitable. I had been full 
of kindly feeling towards my fellow-countrymen when 
they came, but this soon gave place to indifference ; and 
their departure was rather a relief. When they had 
left Paris, there arrived a rich French widow from the 



AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 243 

south with her son and a priest, who seemed to be tutor 
and chaplain. The three lived at our table d'hote; 
and we found them most agreeable, always ready to 
take their share in conversation, and, although far too 
well-bred to commit the slightest infraction of the best 
French social usages, either through ignorance or care- 
lessness, they were at the same time perfectly open 
and easy in their manners. They set up no pretensions, 
they gave themselves no airs, and when they returned 
to their own southern sunshine we felt their departure 
as a loss. 

The foreign idea of social intercourse under such con- 
ditions (that is, of intercourse between strangers who 
are thrown together accidentally) is simply that it is 
better to pass an hour agreeably than in dreary isola- 
tion. People may not have much to say that is of any 
profound interest, but they enjo}^ the free play of the 
mind ; and it sometimes happens, in touching on all sorts 
of subjects, that unexpected lights are thrown upon 
them. Some of the most interesting conversations I 
have ever heard have taken place at foreign tables 
d'hote, between people who had probably never met be- 
fore and who would separate forever in a week. If by 
accident they meet again, such acquaintances recognize 
each other by a bow, but there is none of that intru- 
siveness which the Englishman so greatly dreads. 

Besides these transient acquaintanceships which, 
however brief, are by no means without their value to 
one's experience and culture, the foreign way of under- 
standing a table d'hote includes the daily and habit- 
ual meeting of regular subscribers, a meeting looked 



244 AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 

forward to with pleasure as a break in the labors of 
the day, or a mental refreshment when they are over. 
Nothing affords such relief from the pressure of work 
as a free and animated conversation on other subjects. 
Of this more permanent kind of table d'hote, Mr. Lewes 
gave a lively description in his biography of Goethe : — 

" The English student, clerk, or bachelor, who dines at 
an eating-house, chop-house, or hotel, goes there simply to 
get his dinner, and perhaps look at the ' Times.' Of the 
other diners he knows nothing, cares little. It is rare that 
a word is interchanged between him and his neighbor. 
Quite otherwise in Germany. There the same society is 
generally to be found at the same table. The table d'hote 
is composed of a circle of habitue's, varied by occasional visi- 
tors who in time become, perhaps, members of the circle. 
Even with strangers conversation is freely interchanged ; and 
in a little while friendships are formed over these dinner- 
tables, according as natural tastes and likings assimilate, 
which, extending beyond the mere hour of dinner, are car- 
ried into the current of life. Germans do not rise so hastily 
from the table as we, for time with them is not so precious ; 
life is not so crowded ; time can be found for quiet after- 
dinner talk. The cigars and coffee, which appear before 
the cloth is removed, keep the company together ; and in 
that state of suffused comfort which quiet digestion creates, 
they hear without anger the opinions of antagonists." 

In this account of German habits we see the repast 
made use of as an opportunity for human intercourse, 
which the Englishman avoids except with persons al- 
read}^ known to him or known to a private host. The 
reader has noticed the line I have italicized, — " Even 
with strangers conversation is freely interchanged." 
The consequence is that the stranger does not feel 



AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 245 

himself to be isolated, and if he is not an Englishman 
he does not take offence at being treated like an intelli- 
gent human being, but readily accepts the welcome that 
is offered to him. 

The English peculiarity in this respect does not, 
however, consist so much in avoiding intercourse with 
foreigners as in shunning other English people. It is 
true that in the description of a table d'hote by Miss 
Betham-Ed wards, the English and foreign elements are 
represented as separated by an icy distance, and the 
description is strikingly accurate ; but this shyness and 
timidity as regards foreigners may be sufficiently ac- 
counted for by want of skill and ease in speaking their 
language. Most English people of education know a 
little French and German, but few speak those lan- 
guages freely, fluently, and correctly. When it does 
happen that an Englishman has mastered a foreign 
tongue, he will generally talk more readily and unre- 
servedly with a foreigner than with one of his own 
countrymen. This is the notable thing, that if English 
people do not really dislike and distrust one another, 
if there is not really " a deadly feud of blood, caste, or 
religion" to separate them, they expose themselves to 
the accusation of John Stuart Mill, that " everybody 
acts as if everybody else was either an enemy or a 
bore." 

This English avoidance of English people is so re- 
markable and exceptional a characteristic that it could 
not but greatly interest and exercise so observant a 
mind as that of De Tocqueville. We have seen how 
accurately he noticed it ; how exactly the conduct of 



246 AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 

shy Englishmen had fixed itself in his memory. Let 
us now see how he accounted for it. 

Is it a mark of aristocracy ? Is it because our race 
is more aristocratic than other races ? 

De Tocqueville's theory was, that it is not the mark 
of an aristocratic society, because, in a society classed 
by birth, although people of different castes hold little 
communication with each other, they talk easily when 
they meet, without either fearing or desiring social 
fusion. "Their intercourse is not founded on equality, 
but it is free from constraint." 

This view of the subject is confirmed b}^ all that I 
know, through personal tradition, of the really aristo- 
cratic time in France that preceded the Revolution. 
The old-fashioned facility and directness of communi- 
cation between ranks that were separated by wide social 
distances would surprise and almost scandalize a modern 
aspirant to false aristocracy, who has assumed the de, 
and makes up in morgue what is wanting to him in 
antiquity of descent. I believe, too, that when Eng- 
land was a far more aristocratic country than it is at 
present, manners were less distant and not so cold and 
suspicious. 

If the blame is not to be laid on the spirit of aristoc- 
racy, what is the real cause of the indisputable fact that 
an Englishman avoids an Englishman ? De Tocqueville 
believed that the cause was to be found in the uncer- 
tainty of a transition state from aristocratic to pluto- 
cratic ideas ; that there is still the notion of a strict 
classification ; and yet that this classification is no longer 
determined by blood, but by money, which has taken its 



'AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 247 

place, so that although the ranks exist still, as if the 
country were realty aristocratic, it is not easy to see 
clearly, and at the first glance, who occupies them. 
Hence there is a guerre sourde between all the citi- 
zens. Some tr}^ by a thousand artifices to edge their 
way in reality or apparently amongst those above them ; 
others fight without ceasing to repel the usurpers of 
their rights ; or rather, the same person does both ; and 
whilst he struggles to introduce himself into the upper 
region he perpetually endeavors to put down aspirants 
who are still beneath him. 

" The pride of aristocracy," said De Tocqueville, 
" being still very great with the English, and the limits 
of aristocracy having become doubtful, every one fears 
that he may be surprised at any moment into undesir- 
able familiarity. Not being able to judge at first sight 
of the social position of those they meet, the English 
prudently avoid contact. They fear, in rendering little 
services, to form in spite of themselves an ill-assorted 
friendship ; they dread receiving attention from others ; 
and they withdraw themselves from the indiscreet grati- 
tude of an unknown fellow-countryman as carefully as 
they would avoid his hatred." 

This, no doubt, is the true explanation, but something 
may be added to it. An Englishman dreads acquaint- 
ances from the apprehension that they ma} 7 end by 
coming to his house ; a Frenchman is perfectly at his 
ease on that point by reason of the greater discretion 
of French habits. It is perfectly understood, in France, 
that you may meet a man at a cafe for years, and talk 
to him with the utmost freedom, and yet he will not 



248 AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 

come near your private residence unless you ask him ; 
and when he meets you in the street he will not stop 
you, but will simply lift his hat, — a customary salutation 
from all who know your name, which does not compro- 
mise jon in any way. It might perhaps be an exag- 
geration to say that in France there is absolutely no 
struggling after a higher social position fry means of 
acquaintances, but there is certainly very little of it. 
The great majority of French people live in the most 
serene indifference as regards those who are a little 
above them socially. They hardly even know their 
titles ; and when they do know them the}' do not care 
about them in the least. 1 

It may not be surprising that the conduct of Ameri- 
cans should differ from that of Englishmen, as Americans 
have no titles ; but if they have not titles they have vast 
inequalities of wealth, and Englishmen can be repellent 
without titles. Yet, in spite of pecuniar} 7 differences 
between Americans, and notwithstanding the English 
blood in their veins, they do not avoid one another. 

1 The difference of interest as regards people of rank may be 
seen by a comparison of French and English newspapers. In an 
English paper, even on the Liberal side, you constantly meet with 
little paragraphs informing you that one titled person has gone to 
stay with another titled person ; that some old titled lady is in 
poor health, or some young one going to be married ; or that some 
gentleman of title has gone out in his yacht, or entertained friends 
to shoot grouse, — the reason being that English people like to hear 
about persons of title, however insignificant the news may be in 
itself. If paragraphs of the same kind were inserted in any 
serious Erench newspaper the subscribers would wonder how they 
got there, and what possible interest for the public there could be 
in the movements of mediocrities, who had nothing but titles to 
distinguish them. 



AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 249 

" If they meet by accident," saj^s De Tocqueville, 
" they neither seek nor avoid one another ; their way of 
meeting is natural, frank, and open ; it is evident that 
they hope or fear scarcely anything from each other, 
and that they neither tr} T to exhibit nor to conceal the 
station they occupy. If their manner is often cold and 
serious, it is never either haughty or stiff; and when 
they do not speak it is because they are not in the 
humor for conversation, and not because they believe 
it their interest to be silent. In a foreign county two 
Americans are friends at once, simply because they are 
Americans. They are separated by no prejudice, and 
their common country draws them together. In the 
case of two Englishmen the same blood is not enough ; 
there must be also identity of rank." 

The English habit strikes foreigners by contrast, and 
it strikes Englishmen in the same way when they have 
lived much in foreign countries. Charles Lever had 
lived abroad, and was evidently as much struck by 
this as De Tocqueville himself. Many readers will 
remember his brilliant stoiy, " That Boy of Norcott's," 
and how the young hero, after finding himself delight- 
fully at ease with a society of noble Hungarians, at the 
Schloss Hunyadi, is suddenly chilled and alarmed by 
the intelligence that an English lord is expected. 
"When they shall see," he says, "how my titled 
countryman will treat me, — the distance at which he 
will hold me, and the measured firmness with which 
he will repel, not my familiarities, for I should not 
dare them, but simply the ease of my manner, — the 
foreigners will be driven to regard me as some ignoble 



250 AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 

upstart who has no pretension whatever to be amongst 
them." 

Lever also noted that a foreigner would have had a 
better chance of civil treatment than an Englishman. 
" In my father's house I had often had occasion to 
remark that while Englishmen freely admitted the ad- 
vances of a foreigner and accepted his acquaintance 
with a courteous readiness, with each other they main- 
tained a cold and studied reserve, as though no differ- 
ence of place or circumstance was to obliterate that 
insular code which defines class, and limits each man 
to the exact rank he belongs to." 

These readings and experiences, and many others too 
long to quote or narrate, have led me to the conclusion 
that it is scarcely possible to attempt any other manner 
with English people than that which the very peculiar 
and exceptional state of national feeling appears to 
authorize. The reason is that in the present state of 
feeling the innovator is almost sure to be misunder- 
stood. He may be perfectly contented with his own 
social position ; his mind may be utterly devoid of airy 
desire to raise himself in society ; the extent of his 
present wishes may be to wile away the tedium of a 
journey or a repast with a little intelligent conversation ; 
yet if he breaks down the barrier of English reserve 
he is likely to be taken for a pushing and intrusive per- 
son who is eager to lift himself in the world. Every 
friendly expression on his part, even in a look or the 
tone of his voice, "simply the ease of his manner," 
may be repelled as an impertinence. In the face of 
such a probable misinterpretation one feels that it is 



.42V ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 251 

hardly possible to be too distant or too cold. When 
two men meet it is the colder and more reserved man 
who alwaj T s has the advantage. He is the rock ; the 
other is the wave that comes against the rock and falls 
shattered at its foot. 

It would be wrong to conclude this Essay without a 
word of reference to the exceptional Englishman who 
can pass an hour intelligently with a stranger, and is not 
constantly preoccupied with the idea that the stranger 
is plotting how to make some ulterior use of him. 
Such Englishmen are usually men of ripe experience, 
who have travelled much and seen much of the world, 
so that they have lost our insular distrust. I have met 
with a few of them, — they are not very numerous, — 
and I wish that I could meet the same fellow-country- 
men by some happ} r accident again. There is nothing 
stranger in life than those very short friendships that 
are formed in an hour between two people born to 
understand each other, and cut short forever the next 
day, or the next week, by an inevitable separation. 1 

1 Since this Essay was written I have come upon a passage 
quoted from Henry Knyghton by Augustin Thierry in his " His- 
tory of the Norman Conquest : " — 

"It is not to be wondered at if the difference of nationality (between 
the Norman and Saxon races) produces a difference of conditions, or 
that there should result from it an excessive distrust of natural love; 
and that the separateness of blood should produce a broken confidence 
in mutual trust and affection." 

Now, the question suggests itself, whether the reason why 
Englishman shuns Englishman to-day may not be traceable, ulti- 
mately, to the state of feeling described by Knyghton as a result 
of the Norman Conquest. We must remember that the avoid- 
ance of English by English is quite peculiar to us ; no other race 



252 AN ENGLISH PECULIARITY. 

exhibits the same peculiarity. It is therefore probably due to 
some very exceptional fact in English history. The Norman 
Conquest was exactly the exceptional fact we are in search of. 
The results of it may be traceable as follows: — 

1. Norman and Saxon shun each other. 

2. Norman has become aristocrat. 

3. Would-be aristocrat (present representative of Norman) shuns 
possible plebeian (present representative of Saxon). 



OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 253 



ESSAY XVIII. 

OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 

\ LL virtue has its negative as well as its positive 
■*-*- side, and every ideal includes not having as well 
as having. Gentility, for those who aspire to it and 
value it, is an ideal condition of humanity, a superior 
state which is maintained by selection amongst the 
things that life offers to a man who has the power to 
choose. He is judged by his selection. The genteel per- 
son selects in his own way, not only amongst things that 
can be seen and handled, such as the material adjuncts of 
a high state of civilization, but also amongst the things 
of the mind, including all the varieties of knowledge. 
That a selection of this kind should be one of the 
marks of gentility is in itself no more than a natural 
consequence of the idealizing process as we see it con- 
tinually exercised in the fine arts. Every work of fine 
art is a result of selection. The artist does not give us 
the natural truth as it is, but he purposely omits very 
much of it, and alters that which he recognizes. The 
genteel person is himself a work of art, and, as such, 
contains only partial truth. 

This is the central fact about gentility, that it is a 
narrow ideal, impoverishing the mind by the rejection 
of truth as much as it adorns it by elegance ; and it is 
for this reason that gentility is disliked and refused by 



254 OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 

all powerful and inquiring intellects. They look upon 
it as a mental condition with which they have nothing 
to do, and they pursue their labors without the slightest 
deference or condescension to it. They ma} T , however, 
profitably study it as one of the states of human life, 
and a state towards which a certain portion of humanhry, 
aided by wealth, appears to tend inevitably. 

The misfortune of the genteel mind is that it is 
carried by its own idealism so far away from the truth 
of nature that it becomes divorced from fact and unable 
to see the movement of the actual world ; so that gen- 
teel people, with their narrow and erroneous ideas, are 
sure to find themselves thrust aside by men of robust 
intelligence, who are not genteel, but who have a stronger 
grip upon reality. There is, consequently, a pathetic 
element in gentility, with its fallacious hopes, its certain 
disappointments, so easily foreseen by all whom it has 
not blinded, and its immense, its amazing, its ever 
invincible ignorance. 

There is not a country in Europe more favorable 
than France for the study of the genteel condition of 
mind. There you have it in its perfection in the class 
qui n'a rien appris et rien oublie, and in the numer- 
ous aspirants to social position who desire to mix them- 
selves and become confounded with that class. It has 
been in the highest degree fashionable, since the estab- 
lishment of the Eepublic, to be ignorant of the real 
course of events. In spite of overwhelming evidence 
to the contrary, genteel people either really believed 
or universally professed to believe during the lifetime 
of the Count de Chamborcl, that his restoration was 



OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 255 

not only probable but imminent. No belief could have 
been more destitute of foundation in fact ; and if genteel 
people had not been compelled by gentility to shut 
their eyes against what was obvious to everybody else, 
they might have ascertained the truth with the utmost 
facility. The truth was simply this, that the country 
was going away further and further from divine right 
every day, and from every sort of real monarchy, or 
one-man government, and was becoming more and 
more attached to representative institutions and an 
elective system everywhere ; and what made this truth 
glaringly evident was not only the steadily increasing 
number of republican elections, but the repeated return 
to power of the very ministers whom the party of 
divine right most bitterly execrated. The same class 
of genteel French people affected to believe that the 
end of the temporal power of the Papacy by the founda- 
tion of the Italian kingdom was but a temporary crisis, 
probably of short duration ; though the process which 
had brought the Papacy to nothing as a temporal sover- 
eignty had been slow, gradual, and natural, — the pro- 
gressive enfeeblement of a theocracy unable to defend 
itself against its own subjects, and dependent on foreign 
soldiers for every hour of its artificial survival. Such 
is genteel ignorance in political matters. It is a polite 
shutting of the e} T es against all facts and tendencies 
that are disagreeable to people of fashion. It is un- 
pleasant to people of fashion to be told that the France 
of the future is more likely to be governed by men 
of business than by kings and cardinals ; it is disagree- 
able to them to hear that the Pope is not to do what 



256 OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 

he likes with the Roman people ; and so, to please them, 
we are to pretend that we do not understand the course 
of recent history, which is obvious to everybody who 
thinks. The course of events has always proved the 
blindness of the genteel world, its incapacity to under- 
stand the present and forecast the future ; yet still it 
goes on in the old way, shutting its eyes resolutely 
against surrounding facts, and making predictions that 
are sure to be falsified by the event. Such a state of 
mind is unintelligent to the last degree, but then it is 
genteel ; and there is always, in every country, a large 
class of persons who would rather be gentlemanly than 
wise. 

In religion, genteel ignorance is not less remarkable 
than in politics. Here the mark of gentility is to ignore 
the unfashionable churches, and generally to underesti- 
mate all those forces of opinion that are not on the 
side of the particular form of orthodoxy which is pro- 
fessed by the upper class. In France it is one of the 
marks of high breeding not to know anj^thing about 
Protestantism. The fact that there are such people 
as Protestants is admitted, and it is believed that some 
of them are decent and respectable people in their line 
of life, who may follow an erroneous religion with an 
assiduit} 7 praiseworthy in itself, but the nature of their 
opinions is not known, and it is thought better not to 
inquire into them. 

In England the gentry know hardly anything about 
Dissenters. As to the organization of dissenting com- 
munities, nobodj 7 ever hears of any of them having 
bishops, and so it is supposed that they must have some 



OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 257 

sort of democratic system. Genteel knowledge of dis- 
senting faith and practice is confined to a very few 
points, — that Unitarians do not believe in the Trinity, 
that Baptists have some unusual practice about baptism, 
and that Methodists are fond of singing hymns. This 
is all, and more than enough ; as it is inconceivable that 
an aristocratic person can have an}-thing to do with 
Dissent, unless he wants the Nonconformist vote in 
politics. If Dissenters are to be spoken of at all, it 
should be in a condescending tone, as good people in 
their way, who may be decent members of the middle 
and lower classes, of some use in withstanding the tide 
of infidelity. 

I remember a lady who condemned some eminent 
man as an atheist, on which I ventured to object that 
he was a deist only. "It is exactly the same thing," 
she replied. Being at that time young and argumenta- 
tive, I maintained that there existed a distinction : that 
a deist believed in God, and an atheist had not that 
belief. "That is of no consequence," she rejoined; 
" what concerns us is that we should know as little 
as possible about such people." When this dialogue 
took place the lady seemed to me unreasonable and 
unjust, but now I perceive that she was genteel. She 
desired to keep her soul pure from the knowledge 
which gentility did not recognize ; she wanted to know 
nothing about the shades and colors of heresy. 

There is a delightful touch of determined ignorance 
in the answer of the Russian prelates to Mr. William 
Palmer, who went to Russia in 1840 with a view to 
bring about a recognition of Anglicanism by Oriental 

17 



258 OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 

orthodoxy. In substance, according to Cardinal New- 
man, it amounted to this: "We know of no true 
Church besides our owe We are the only Church in 
the world. The Latins are heretics, or all but heretics ; 
you are worse ; ice do not even know your name." 
It would be difficult to excel this last touch ; it is the 
perfection of uncontaminated orthodox}^ of the pure 
Russian religious comme il faut. We, the holy, the 
undefiled, the separate from heretics and from those 
lost ones, worse than heretics, into whose aberrations 
we never inquire, " we do not even hnow yotcr name." 

Of all examples of genteel ignorance, there are none 
more frequent than the ignorance of those necessities 
which are occasioned by a limited income. I am not, 
at present, alluding to downright poverty. It is genteel 
to be aware that the poor exist ; it is genteel, even, to 
have poor people of one's own to pet and patronize ; 
and it is pleasant to be kind to such poor people when 
they receive our kindness in a properly submissive 
spirit, with a due sense of the immense distance be- 
tween us, and read the tracts we give them, and listen 
respectfully to our advice. It is genteel to have to do 
with poor people in this wa} r , and even to know some- 
thing about them ; the real genteel ignorance consists 
in not recognizing the existence of those impediments 
that are familiar to people of limited means. " I can- 
not understand," said an English lady, " wiry people 
complain about the difficulties of housekeeping. Such 
difficulties may almost alwa}*s be included under one 
head, — insufficiency of servants ; people have only to 
take more servants, and the difficulties disappear." Of 



OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 259 

course the cost of maintaining a tr up of domestics is 
too trifling to be taken into consideration. A French 
lady, in my hearing, asked what fortune had such a 
family. The answer was simple and decided, they had 
no fortune at all. " No fortune at all! then how can 
thejr possibly live ? How can people live who have no 
fortune ? " This lady's genteel ignorance was enlight- 
ened by the explanation that when there is no fortune 
in a family it is generally supported by the labor of one 
or more of its members. " I cannot understand," said 
a rich Englishman to one of my friends, " why men are 
so imprudent as to allow themselves to sink into money 
embarrassments. There is a simple rule that I follow 
myself, and that I have always found a great safe- 
guard, — it is, never to let one's balance at the banker's 
fall below Jive thousand pounds. By strictly adhering 
to this rule one is alwa} 7 s sure to be able to meet any 
unexpected and immediate necessity." Why, indeed, 
do we not all follow a rule so evidently wise? It may 
be especially recommended to struggling professional 
men with large families. If only they can be persuaded 
to act upon it they will find it an unspeakable relief 
from anxiety, and the present volume will not have 
been penned in vain. 

Genteel ignorance of pecuniary difficulties is con- 
spicuous in the case of amusements. It is supposed, 
if you are inclined to amuse yourself in a certain limited 
way, that you are stupid for not doing it on a much 
more expensive scale. Charles Lever wrote a charming 
paper for one of the early numbers of the " Cornhill 
Magazine," in which he gave an account of the dangers 



260 OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 

and difficulties he had encountered in riding and boating, 
simply because he had set limits to his expenditure on 
those pastimes, an economy that seemed unaccountably 
foolish to his genteel acquaintances. "■ Lever will ride 
such screws ! Why won't he give a proper price for 
a horse ? It 's the stupidest thing in the world to be 
under-horsed ; and bad economy besides." These re- 
marks, Lever said, were not sarcasms on his skill or 
sneers at his horsemanship, but Vney were far worse, 
they were harsh judgments on himself expressed in a 
manner that made reply impossible. So with his boat- 
ing. Lever had a passion for boating, for that real 
boating which is perfectly distinct from yachting and 
incomparably less costly ; but richer acquaintances in- 
sisted on the superior advantages of the more expen- 
sive amusement. " These cockle-shells, sir, must go 
over ; they have no bearings, they lee over, and there 
you are, — you fill and go down. Have a good decked 
boat, — I should say five-and-thirty or forty tons ; get 
a clever skipper and a lively crew." Is not this exactly 
like the ladj- who thought people stupid for not having 
an adequate establishment of servants ? 

Another form of genteel ignorance consists in being 
so completely blinded by conventionalism as not to be 
able to perceive the essential identity of two modes of 
life or habits of action when one of them happens to be 
in what is called " good form," whilst the other is not 
accepted \>y polite society. My own tastes and pur- 
suits have often led me to do things for the sake of 
stud} T or pleasure which in reality differ but very 
slightl}' from what genteel people often do ; 3"et, at the 



OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 261 

same time, this slight difference is sufficient to prevent 
them from seeing any resemblance whatever between 
m} T practice and theirs. When a 3 T oung man, I found 
a wooden hut extremely convenient for painting from 
nature, and when at a distance from other lodging I 
slept in it. This was unfashionable ; and genteel peo- 
ple expressed much wonder at it, being especially sur- 
prised that I could be so imprudent as to risk health 
by sleeping in a little wooden house. Conventionalism 
made them perfectly ignorant of the fact that they 
occasionally slept in little wooden houses themselves. 
A railwa} T carriage is simply a wooden hut on wheels, 
generally very ill- ventilated, and presenting the alter- 
native of foul air or a strong draught, with vibration 
that makes sleep difficult to some and to others abso- 
lutely impossible. I have passed manj^ nights in those 
public wooden huts on wheels, but have never slept in 
them so pleasantly as in my own private one. 1 Gen- 
teel people also use wooden dwellings that float on 
water. A j-acht's cabin is nothing but a hut of a 
peculiar shape with its own special inconveniences. 
On land a hut will remain steady ; at sea it inclines in 
ever} T direction, and is tossed about like Gulliver's large 
box. An Italian nobleman who liked travel, but had 
no taste for dirty Southern inns, had four vans that 
formed a square at night, with a little courtyard in the 
middle that was covered with canvas and served as a 
spacious dining-room. The arrangement was excellent, 

1 It so happens that I am writing this Essay in a rough wooden 
hut of my own, which is in reality a most comfortable little build- 
ing, though "stuffy luxury "is rigorously excluded. 



262 OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 

but he was considered hopelessly eccentric ; } T et how 
slight was the difference between his vans and a train 
of saloon carriages for the railway ! He simply had 
saloon carriages that were adapted for common roads. 

It is difficult to see what advantage there can be in 
genteel ignorance to compensate for its evident disad- 
vantages. Not to be acquainted with unfashionable 
opinions, not to be able to imagine unfashionable ne- 
cessities, not to be able to perceive the real likeness 
between fashionable and unfashionable modes of life 
on account of some external and superficial difference, 
is like living in a house with closed shutters. Surely 
a man, or a woman either, might have as good man- 
ners, and be as highly civilized in all respects, with 
accurate notions of things as with a head full of illu- 
sions. To understand the world as it really is, to see 
the direction in which humanity is travelling, ought 
to be the purpose of every strong and healthy intellect, 
even though such knowledge may take it out of gen- 
tility altogether. 

The effect of genteel ignorance on human intercourse 
is such a deduction from the interest of it that men of 
ability often avoid genteel societ} T altogether, and either 
devote themselves to solitary labors, cheered princi- 
pally by the companionship of books, or else keep to 
intimate friends of their own order. In Continental 
countries the public drinking-places are often fre- 
quented by men of culture, not because they want to 
drink, but because they can talk freely about what they 
think and what they know without being paralyzed by 
the determined ignorance of the genteel. In England, 



OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE. 263 

no doubt, there is more information ; and yet Stuart 
Mill said that "general societ}* as now carried on in 
England is so insipid an affair, even to the persons who 
make it what it is, that it is kept up for any reason 
rather than the pleasure it affords. All serious discus- 
sion on matters in which opinions differ being consid- 
ered ill-bred, and the national deficiency in liveliness 
and sociability having prevented the cultivation of the 
art of talking agreeably on trifles, the sole attraction 
of what is called society to those who are not at the 
top of the tree is the hope of being aided to climb a 
little higher. To a person of any but a very common 
order in thought or feeling, such society, unless he has 
personal objects to serve by it, must be supremely un- 
attractive ; and most people in the present day of any 
realty high class of intellect make their contact with it 
so slight and at such long intervals as to be almost 
considered as retiring from it altogether." The loss 
here is distinctly to the genteel persons themselves. 
They may not feel it, the} T may be completely insensi- 
ble of it, but by making society insipid they eliminate 
from it the very men who might have been its most 
valuable elements, and who, whether working in soli- 
tude or living with a few congenial spirits, are really 
the salt of the earth. 



264 PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 



ESSAY XIX. 

PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 

TTJATRIOTIC ignorance is maintained by the satis- 
■*- faction that we feel in ignoring what is favorable 
to another nation. It is a voluntary closing of the 
mind against the disagreeable truth that another nation 
may be on certain points equal to our own, or even, 
though inferior, in some degree comparable to our own. 
The effect of patriotic ignorance as concerning human 
intercourse is to place any one who knows the exact 
truth in the unpleasant dilemma of having either to 
correct mistakes which are strongly preferred to truth, 
or else to give assent to them against his sense of jus- 
tice. International intercourse is made almost impos- 
sible by patriotic ignorance, except amongst a few 
highly cultivated persons who are superior to it. Noth- 
ing is more difficult than to speak about one's own 
country with foreigners who are perpetually putting 
forward the errors which they have imbibed all their 
lives, and to which they cling with such tenacity that it 
seems as if those errors were, in some mysterious wa} r , 
essential to their mental comfort and well-being. If, 
on the other hand, we have any really intimate knowl- 
edge of a foreign country, gained by long residence in 
it and studious observation of the inhabitants, then we 
find a corresponding difficulty in talking reasonably 



PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 265 

about it and them with our own countrymen, because 
they, too, have their patriotic ignorance which they 
prize and value as foreigners value theirs. 

At the risk of turning this Essay into a string of 
anecdotes, I intend to give a few examples of patriotic 
ignorance, in order to show to what an astonishing 
degree of perfection it may attain. When we fully un- 
derstand this we shall also understand how those who 
possess such a treasure should be anxious for its pres- 
ervation. Their anxiety is the more reasonable that 
in these days there is a difficulty in keeping things when 
they are easily injured by light. 

A French lady who possessed this treasure in its 
perfection gave, in my hearing, as a reason why French 
people seldom visited England, that there were no works 
of art there, no collections, no architecture, nothing to 
gratify the artistic sense or the intelligence ; and that it 
was only people specially interested in trade and manu- 
factures who went to England, as the country had 
nothing to show but factories and industrial products. 
On hearing this statement, there suddenly passed be- 
fore 1213 7 mind's eye a rapid vision of the great works 
of architecture, sculpture, and painting that I had seen 
in England, and a confused recollection of many minor 
examples of these arts not quite unworthy of a studious 
man's attention. It is impossible to contradict a lady ; 
and any statement of the simple truth would, in this 
instance, have been a direct and crushing contradiction. 
I ventured on a faint remonstrance, but without effect ; 
and my fair enemy triumphed. There were no works of 
art in England. Thus she settled the question. 



266 PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 

This little incident led me to take note of French 
ideas about England with reference to patriotic igno- 
rance ; and I discovered that there existed a very general 
belief that there was no intellectual light of anjr kind 
in England. Paris was the light of the world, and 
only so far as Parisian rays might penetrate the mental 
fog of the British Islands was there a chance of its 
becoming even faintly luminous. It was settled that 
the speciality of England was trade and manufacture, 
that we were all of us either merchants or cotton- 
spinners, and I discovered that we had no learned 
societies, no British Museum, no Royal Academy of 
Arts. 

An English painter, who for many years had exhibited 
on the line of the Royal Academy, happened to be men- 
tioned in my presence and in that of a French artist. 
I was asked by some French people who knew him 
personally whether the English painter had a good pro- 
fessional standing. I answered that he had a fair 
though not a brilliant reputation ; meanwhile the French 
artist showed signs of uneasiness, and at length ex- 
ploded with a vigorous protest against the inadmissible 
idea that a painter could be anything whatever who 
was not known at the French Salon. " II n'est pas 
connu au Salon de Paris, done, il n'existe pas — il 
n'existe pas. Les reputations dans les beaux-arts se 
font au Salon de Paris et pas ailleurs." This French- 
man had no conception whatever of the simple fact 
that artistic reputations are made in every capital of 
the civilized world. That was a truth which his patriot- 
ism could not tolerate for a moment. 



PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 267 

A French gentleman expressed his surprise that I 
did not have my books translated into French, "be- 
cause," said he, " no literary reputation can be con- 
sidered established until it has received the consecration 
of Parisian approval." To his unfeigned astonishment 
I answered that London and not Paris was the capital 
city of English literature, and that English authors had 
not jet fallen so low as to care for the opinion of critics 
ignorant of their language. 

I then asked myself why this intense French patriotic 
ignorance should continue so persistently ; and the an- 
swer appeared to be that there was something pro- 
foundly agreeable to French patriotic sentiment in the 
belief that England had no place in the artistic and 
intellectual world. Until quite recently the very exist- 
ence of an English school of painting was denied by 
all patriotic Frenchmen, and English art was rigorously 
excluded from the Louvre. 1 Even now a French writer 
upon art can scarcely mention English painting without 
treating it de haut en bas, as if his Gallic nationality 
gave him a natural right to treat uncivilized islanders 
with lofty disdain or condescending patronage. 

My next example has no reference to literature or 
the fine arts. A young French gentleman of superior 
education and manners, and with the instincts of a 
sportsman, said in my hearing, " There is no game in 
England." His tone was that of a man who utters 
a truth universally acknowledged. 

1 At present it is most inadequately represented by a few un- 
important gifts. The donors have desired to break the rule of 
exclusion, and have succeeded so far, but that is all. 



268 PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 

It might be a matter of little consequence, as touching 
our national pride, whether there was game in England 
or not. I have no doubt that some philosophers would 
consider, and perhaps with reason, that the non-exist- 
ence of game, where it can only be maintained by an 
army of keepers and a penal code of its own, would 
be the sign of an advancing social state ; but my 3 r oung 
Frenchman was not much of a philosopher, and no 
doubt he considered the non-existence of game in Eng- 
land a mark of inferiority to France. There is some- 
thing in the masculine mind, inherited perhaps from 
ancestors who lived by the chase, which makes it look 
upon an abundance of wild things that can be shot at, 
or run after with horses and dogs, as a reason for the 
greatest pride and glorification. On reflection, it will 
be found that there is more in the matter than at first 
sight appears. As there is no game in England, of 
course there are no sportsmen in that country. The 
absence of game means the absence of shooters and 
huntsmen, and consequently an inferiority in manly 
exercises to the French, thousands of whom take shoot- 
ing licenses and enjoy the invigorating excitement of 
the chase. For this reason it is agreeable to French 
patriotic sentiment to be perfectly certain that there 
is no game in England. When I inquired what reason 
my young friend had for holding his conviction on the 
subject, he told me that in a country like England, so 
full of trade and manufactures, there could not be any 
room for game. 

One of the most popular of French songs is that 
charming one by Pierre Dupont in praise of his vine. 



PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 269 

Every Frenchman who knows anything knows that 
song, and believes that he also knows the tune. The 
consequence is that when one of them begins to sing it 
his companions join in the refrain or chorus, which is 
as follows : — 

" Bons Eran^ais, quand je vois mon verre 
Plein de ce vin couleur de feu 
Je songe en remerciant Dieu 
Qu'ils n'en ont pas dans l'Angleterre ! " 

The singers repeat " qn'ils n'en ont pas," and besides 
this the whole of the last line is repeated with trium- 
phant emphasis. 

We need not feel hurt by this little outburst of 
patriotism. There is no real hatred of England at 
the bottom of it, only a little " malice " of a harmless 
kind, and the song is sometimes sung good-hum oredly 
in the presence of Englishmen. It is, however, really 
connected with patriotic ignorance. The common 
French belief is that as vines are not grown in Eng- 
land, we have no wine in our cellars, so that English 
people hardly know the taste of wine ; and this belief 
is too pleasing to the French mind to be readily aban. 
cloned by those who hold it. They feel that it enhances 
the delightfulness of every glass the} T drink. The case 
is precisely the same with fruit. The French enjoy 
plenty of excellent fruit, and they enjoy it all the more 
heartily from a firm conviction that there is no fruit 
of any kind in England. "Pas un fruit," said a 
countryman of Pierre Dupont in writing about our un- 
favored island, " pas un fruit ne murit dans ce pa} T s." 
What, not even a gooseberry? Were the plums, pears, 



270 PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 

strawberries, apples, apricots, that we consumed in 
omnivorous boyhood every one of them unripe? It is 
lamentable to think how miserably the English live. 
They have no game, no wine, no fruit (it appears to 
be doubtful, too, whether they have any vegetables), 
and they dwell in a perpetual fog where sunshine is 
totally unknown. It is believed, also, that there is no 
landscape-beauty in England, — nothing but a green 
field with a hedge, and then another green field with 
another hedge, till you come to the bare chalk cliffs and 
the dreary northern sea. The English have no Devon- 
shire, no valley of the Severn, no country of the Lakes. 
The Thames is a foul ditch, without a trace of natural 
beauty any where. 1 

It would be eas}- to give man}- more examples of the 
patriotism of our neighbors, but perhaps for the sake 
of variety it may be desirable to turn the glass in the 
opposite direction and see what English patriotism has 
to say about France. *\Te shall find the same principle 
at work, the same determination to believe that the 
foreign country is totally destitute of many things on 
which we greatly pride ourselves. I do not know that 
there is any reason to be proud of having mountains, 
as they are excessively inconvenient objects that greatly 
impede agriculture and communication ; however, in 
some parts of Great Britain it is considered, somehow, 
a glory for a nation to have mountains ; and there used 

1 These, of course, are only examples of vulgar patriotic igno- 
rance. A few Frenchmen who have really seen what is best in 
English landscape are delighted with it ; but the common impres- 
sion about England is that it is an ugly country covered with 
mines, and on which the sun never shines. 



PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 271 

to be a firm belief that French landscape was almost 
destitute of mountainous grandeur. There were the 
Highlands of Scotland, but who had ever heard of the 
Highlands of France? Was not France a wearisome, 
tame country that unfortunately had to be traversed 
before one could get to Switzerland and Italy ? Nobody 
seemed to have any conception that France was rich 
in mountain scenery of the very grandest kind. Switz- 
erland was understood to be the place for mountains, 
and there was a settled but erroneous conviction that 
Mont Blanc was situated in that country. As for 
the Grand-Pelvoux, the Pointe des Ecrius, the Mont 
Olan, the Pic d'Arsine, and the Trois Ellions, no- 
body had ever heard of them. If you had told any 
average Scotchman that the most famous Bens would 
be lost and nameless in the mountainous departments 
of France, the news would have greatly surprised him. 
He would have been astonished to hear that the area 
of mountainous France exceeded the area of Scotland, 
and that the height of its loftiest summits attained three 
times the elevation of Ben Nevis. 

It may be excusable to feel proud of mountains, as 
they are noble objects in spite of their inconvenience, 
but it seems less reasonable to be patriotic about hedges, 
which make us pay dearly for any beauty they may 
possess by hiding the perspective of the land. A hedge 
six feet high easily masks as many miles of distance. 
However, there is a pride in English hedges, accom- 
panied by a belief that there are no such things in 
France. The truth is that regions of large extent are 
divided by hedges in France as they are in England. 



272 PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 

Another belief is that there is little or no wood in 
France, though wood is the principal fuel, and vast 
forests are reserved for its supply. I have heard an 
Englishman proudly congratulating himself, in the spirit 
of Dupont's song, on the supposed fact that the French 
had neither coal nor iron ; and yet I have visited a vast 
establishment at the Creuzot, where ten thousand work- 
men are continually employed in making engines, 
bridges, armor-plates, and other things from iron found 
close at hand, hy the help of coal fetched from a very 
little distance. I have read in an English newspaper 
that there were no singing birds in France ; and b} 7 way 
of commentary a hundred little French songsters kept 
up a merry din that would have gladdened the soul of 
Chaucer. It happened, too, to be the time of the j T ear 
for nightingales, which filled the woods with their music 
in the moonlight. 

Patriotic ignorance often gets hold of some partial 
truth unfavorable to another country, and then applies 
it in such an absolute manner that it is truth no longer. 
It is quite true, for example, that athletic exercises are 
not so much cultivated in France, nor held in such high 
esteem, as they are in England, but it is not true that 
all young Frenchmen are inactive. They are often 
both good swimmers and good pedestrians, and, though 
they do not play cricket, many of them take a practical 
interest in gjminastics and are skilful on the bar and 
the trapeze. The French learn military drill in then- 
boy hood, and in early manhood they are inured to 
fatigue in the arm} 7 , besides which great numbers of 
them learn fencing on their own account, that they 



PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 273 

may hold their own in a duel. Patriotic ignorance likes 
to shut its eyes to all inconvenient facts of this kind, 
and to dwell on what is unfavorable. A man may 
like a glass of absinthe in a cafe and still be as ener- 
getic as if he drank port wine at home. I know an 
old French officer who never misses his daily visit to 
the cafe, and so might serve as a text for moralizing, 
but at the same time he walks twenty kilometres every 
day. Patriotic ignorance has its opportunity in every 
difference of habit. What can be apparently more 
indolent, for an hour or two after dejeuner, than a 
prosperous man of business in Paris? Very possibly 
he may be caught pla3*ing cards or dominoes in the 
middle of the day, and severely blamed by a foreign 
censor. The difference between him and his equal in 
London is simply in the arrangement of time. The 
Frenchman has been at his work early, and divides his 
day into two parts, with hours of idleness between them. 
Many examples of those numerous international criti- 
cisms that originate in patriotic ignorance are connected 
with the emplo} T ment of words that are apparently com- 
mon to different nations, yet vary in their signification. 
One that has given rise to frequent patriotic criticisms 
is the French word univers. French writers often say 
of some famous author, such as Victor Hugo, ' ' Sa 
renommee remplit l'univers ; " or of some great warrior, 
like Napoleon, "II inquieta l'univers." English critics 
take up these expressions and then say, " Behold how 
bombastic these French writers are, with their absurd 
exaggerations, as if Victor Hugo and Napoleon as- 
tonished the universe, as if the} T were ever heard of 

18 



274 PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 

bej'ond our own little planet ! " Such criticism only 
displays patriotic ignorance of a foreign language. 
The French expression is perfectly correct, and not in 
the least exaggerated. Napoleon did not disquiet the 
universe, but he disquieted Vunivers. Victor Hugo is 
not known beyond the terrestrial globe, but he is known, 
b} T name at least, throughout Vunivers. The persistent 
ignorance of English writers on this point would be 
inexplicable if it were not patriotic ; if it did not afford 
an opportunity for deriding the vanity of foreigners. 
It is the more remarkable that the deriders themselves 
constantly use the word in the same restricted sense 
as an adjective or an adverb. I open Mr. Stanford's 
atlas, and find that it is called " The London Atlas of 
Universal Geograplry," though it does not contain a 
single map of any planet but our own, not even one of 
the visible hemisphere of the moon, which might easily 
have been given. I take a newspaper, and I find that 
the late President of the Royal Society died universally 
respected, though he was known only to the cultivated 
inhabitants of a single planet. Such is the power of 
patriotic ignorance that it is able to prevent men from 
understanding a foreign word when they themselves 
employ a nearly related word in identically the same 
sense. 1 

1 The French word univers has three or four distinct senses. It 
may mean all that exists, or it may mean the solar system, or it 
may mean the earth's surface, in whole or in part. Voltaire said 
that Columbus, by simply looking at a map of our univers, had 
guessed that there must be another, that is, the western hemi- 
sphere. " Paris est la plus belle ville de l'univers " means simply 
that Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. 



PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 275 

The word univers reminds me of universities, and 
they recall a striking example of patriotic ignorance in 
my own countiymen. I wonder how many Englishmen 
there are who know anything about the University of 
France. I never expect an Englishman to know any- 
thing about it ; and, what is more, I am alwaj-s prepared 
to find him impervious to any information on the sub- 
ject. As the organization of the Universit} 7 of France 
differs essentially from that of English universities, each 
of which is localized in one place, and can be seen in its 
entirety from the top of a tower, the Englishman hears 
with contemptuous inattention an} r attempt to make 
him understand an institution without a parallel in his 
own country. Besides this, the Universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge are venerable and wealthy institutions, 
visibly beautiful, whilst the University of France is of 
comparatively recent origin ; and, though large sums 
are expended in its service, the result does not strike 
the eye because the expenditure is distributed over the 
country. I remember having occasion to mention the 
Academy of Lyons to a learned doctor of Oxford who 
was travelling in France, and I found that he had never 
heard of the Academy of Lyons, and knew nothing 
about the organization of the national university of 
which that academy forms a part. From a French 
point of view this is quite as remarkable an example of 
patriotic ignorance as if some foreigner had never heard 
of the diocese of York, or the episcopal organization 
of the Church of England. Every Frenchman who has 
any education at all knows the functions of academies 
in the universit}', and which of the principal cities arc 
the seats of those learned bodies. 



276 PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 

As Englishmen ignore the University of France, they 
naturally at the same time ignore the degrees that it 
confers. They never know what a Licencie is, they 
have no conception of the Agregation, or of the severe 
ordeal of competitive examination through which an 
Agrege must have passed. Therefore, if a Frenchman 
has attained either of these grades, his title is unintel- 
ligible to an Englishman. 

There is, no doubt, great ignorance in France on the 
subject of the English universities, but it is neither in 
the same degree nor of the same kind. I should 
hardly call French ignorance of the classes at Oxford 
patriotic ignorance, because it does not proceed from 
the belief that a foreign university is unworthy of a 
Frenchman's attention. I should cal> French igno- 
rance of the Royal Academy, for example, genuine 
patriotic ignorance, because it proceeds from a con- 
viction that English art is unworthy of notice, and that 
the French Salon is the only exhibition that can inter- 
est an enlightened lover of art. That is the essence of 
patriotism in ignorance, — to be ignorant of what is 
done in another nation, because we believe our own to 
be first and the rest nowhere ; and so the English 
ignorance of the University of France is genuine pa- 
triotic ignorance. It is caused by the existence of 
Oxford and Cambridge, as the French ignorance of the 
Ro} T al Academy is caused by the French Salon. 

Patriotic ignorance is one of the most serious impedi- 
ments to conversation between people of different na- 
tionality, because occasions are continually arising when 
the national sentiments of the one are hurt by the 



PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 277 

ignorance of the other. But we may also wound the 
feelings of a foreigner by assuming a more complete 
degree of ignorance on his part than that which is 
really his. This is sometimes clone by English people 
towards Americans, when English people forget that 
their national literature is the common possession of 
the two countries. A story is told by Mr. Grant 
White of an English lady who informed him that a 
novel (which she advised him to read) had been 
written about Kenil worth, by Sir Walter Scott ; and 
he expected her to recommend a perusal of the works 
of William Shakespeare. Having lived much abroad, 
I am myself occasionally the grateful recipient of val- 
uable information from English friends. For example, 
I remember an Englishman who kindly and quite seri- 
ously informed me that Eton College was a public 
school where many sons of the English aristocracy 
were educated. 

There is a very serious side to patriotic ignorance 
in relation to war. There can be no doubt that many 
of the most foolish, costly, and disastrous wars ever 
undertaken were either directly due to patriotic igno- 
rance, or made possible only by the existence of such 
ignorance in the nation that afterwards suffered by 
them. The way in which patriotic ignorance directly 
tends to produce war is readily intelligible. A nation 
sees its own soldiers, its own cannons, its own ships, 
and becomes so proud of them as to remain contentedly 
and even wilfully ignorant of the military strength and 
efficiency of its neighbors. The war of 1870-71, so 
disastrous to France, was the direct result of patriotic 



278 PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 

ignorance. The country and even the Emperor him- 
self were patriotically ignorant of their own inferior 
militar} T condiuon and of the superior Prussian organi- 
zation. One or two isolated voices were raised in 
warning, but it was considered patriotic not to listen 
to them. The war between Turkey and Eussia, which 
cost Turkey Bulgaria and all but expelled her from 
Europe, might easily have been avoided by the Sultan ; 
but he was placed in a false position by the patriotic 
ignorance of his own subjects, who believed him to be 
far more powerful than he really was, and who would 
have probably dethroned or murdered him if he had 
acted rationally, that is to say, in accordance with the 
degree of strength that he possessed. In almost every 
instance that I am able to remember, the nations that 
have undertaken imprudent and easily avoidable wars 
have done so because they were blinded by patriotic 
ignorance, and therefore either impelled their rulers 
into a foolish course against their better knowledge, or 
else were themselves easily led into peril \)j the temer- 
ity of a rash master, who would risk the well-being of 
all his subjects that he might attain some personal and 
private end. The French have been cured of their 
most dangerous patriotic ignorance, — that concerning 
the military strength of the countiy, — by the war of 
1870, but the cure was of a costly nature. 

Patriotism has been so commonly associated with a 
wilful closing of the eyes against unpleasant facts, that 
those who prefer truth to illusion are often considered 
unpatriotic. Yet surely ignorance has not the immense 
advantage over knowledge of having all patriotism on 



PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE. 279 

her side. There is a far higher and better patriotism 
than that of ignorance ; there is a love of country that 
shows itself in anxiety for its best welfare, and does 
not remain satisfied with the vain delusion of a fancied 
superiorit}' in everything. It is the interest of England 
as a nation to be accurately informed about all that 
concerns her position in the world, and it is impossible 
for her to receive this information if a stupid national 
vanity is always ready to take offence when it is 
offered. It is desirable for England to know exactly 
in what degree she is a militar} 1 - power, and also how 
she stands with reference to the naval armaments of 
other nations, not as they existed in the da} T s of Nelson, 
but as they will exist next year. It is the interest of 
England to know by what tenure she holds India, just 
as in the reign of George the Third it would have been 
very much the interest of England to know accurately 
both the rights of the American colonists and their 
strength. I cannot imagine any circumstances that 
might make ignorance more desirable for a free peo- 
ple than knowledge. With enslaved peoples the case 
is different : the less they know and the greater, per- 
haps, are their chances of enjoying the dull kind of 
somnolent happiness which alone is attainable by them ; 
but this is a kind of happiness that no citizen of a free 
country would desire. 



280 CONFUSIONS. 



ESSAY XX. 

CONFUSIONS. 

OUEELY the analytical faculty must be very rare, or 
*— ' we should not so commonly find people confound- 
ing together things essentially distinct. Any one who 
possesses that faculty naturally, and has followed some 
occupation which strengthens it, must be continually 
amused if he has a humorous turn, or irritated if he is 
irascible, by the astounding mental confusions in which 
men contentedly pass their lives. To be just, this ac- 
count ought to include both sexes, for women indulge 
in confusions even more frequently than men, and are 
less disposed to separate things when they have once 
been jumbled together. 

A confusion of ideas in politics which is not uncom- 
mon amongst the enemies of all change is to believe 
that whoever desires the reform of some law wants to 
do something that is not legal, and has a rebellious, 
subversive spirit. Yet the reformer is not a rebel ; it 
is indeed the peculiar distinction of his position not to 
be a rebel, for there has never been a real reformer (as 
distinguished from a revolutionist) who wished to do 
anything illegal. He desires, certainly, to do some- 
thing which is not legal just at present, but he does 
not wish to do it so long as it remains in the condi- 
tion of illegality. He wishes first to make it legal by 



CONFUSIONS. 281 

obtaining legislative sanction for bis proposal, and then 
to do it when it shall have become as legal as anything 
else, and when all the most conservative people in the 
kingdom will be strenuous in its defence as ' ' part and 
parcel of the law of the land." 

Another confusion in political matters which has 
always been extremely common is that between pri- 
vate and public liberty. Suppose that a law were 
enacted to the effect that each British subject without 
exception should go to Mass every Sunday morning, 
on pain of death, and should take the Roman Catholic 
Sacrament of Holy Communion, involving auricular 
confession, at Easter ; such a law would not be an 
infringement of the sensible liberty of Roman Catho- 
lics, because the}^ do these things already. Then they 
might say, " People talk of the tyranny of the law, 
yet the law is not tyrannical at all ; we enjoy perfect 
liberty in England, and it is most unreasonable to say 
that we do not." The Protestant part of the commu- 
nity would exclaim that such a law was an intolerable 
infringement of liberty, and would rush to arms to get 
rid of it. This is the distinction between private and 
public libert}^. There is private liberty when some men 
are not interfered with in the ordinary habits of their 
existence ; and there has always been much of such pri- 
vate liberty under the worst of despotisms ; but there is 
not public liberty until every man in the country may 
live according to his own habits, so long as he does not 
interfere with the rights of others. Here is a distinc- 
tion plain enough to be evident to a ve^ commonplace 
understanding ; yet the admirers of tyrants are often 



282 CONFUSIONS. 

successful in producing a confusion between the two 
things, and in persuading people that there was u am- 
ple liberty" under some foreign despot, because they 
themselves, when they visited the country that lay 
prostrate under his irresistible power, were allowed to 
eat good dinners, and drive about unmolested, and 
amuse themselves by da} T and by night according to 
every suggestion of their fancy. 

Mairy confusions have been intentionally maintained 
by political enemies in order to cast odium on their 
adversaries ; so that it becomes of great importance to 
a political cause that it should not bear a name with 
two meanings, or to which it may be possible to give 
another meaning than that which was originally in- 
tended. The word "Radical" is an instance of this. 
According to the enemies of radicalism it has always 
meant a political principle that strikes at the root of 
the constitution ; but it was not that meaning of the 
word which induced the first Radicals to commit the 
imprudence of adopting it. The term referred to agri- 
culture rather than tree-felling, the original idea being 
to uproot abuses as a gardener pulls weeds up by the 
roots. I distinctly remember my first boyish notion of 
the Radicals. I saw them in a sort of sjdvan picture, — 
violent savage men armed with sharp axes, and hewing 
away at the foot of a majestic oak that stood for the 
gloiy of England. Since then I have become ac- 
quainted with another instance of the unfortunate 
adoption of a word which may be plausibly perverted 
from its meaning. The French republican motto is 
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternity and to this day there is 



CONFUSIONS. 283 

hardly an English newspaper that does not from time 
to time sneer at the French Eepnblicans for aspiring to 
equalit}^ as if equality were not impossible in the na- 
ture of things, and as if, supposing an unnatural equal- 
ity to be established to-day, the operation of natural 
causes would not bring about inequality to-morrow. 
We are told that some men would be stronger, or 
cleverer, or more industrious than others, and earn 
more and make themselves leaders ; that children of 
the same parents, starting in life with the same for- 
tunes, never remain in precisely the same positions ; 
and much more to the same purpose. All this trite 
and familiar reasoning is without application here. 
The word EgaliU in the motto means something which 
can be attained, and which, though it did not exist in 
France before the Revolution, is now almost a per- 
fect reality there, — it means equality before the law; 
it means that there shall not be privileged classes 
exempt from paying taxes, and favored with such 
scandalous partiality that all posts of importance in 
the government, the army, the magistracy, and the 
church are habitually reserved for them. If it meant 
absolute equality, no Republican could aim at wealth, 
which is the creation of inequality in his own favor ; 
neither would any Republican labor for intellectual 
reputation, or accept honors. There would not even 
be a Republican in the g} T mnastic societies, where ever} 7 
member strives to become stronger and more agile 
than his fellows, and knows that, whether in his favor 
or against him, the most striking inequalities will be 
manifested in every public contest. There would be no 



284 CONFUSIONS. 

Republicans in the Universit} 7 , for has it not a hierar- 
chy with the most marked gradations of title, and 
differences of consideration and authority? Yet the 
University is so full of Republicans that it is scarcely 
too much to say that it is entirely composed of them. 
I am aware that there are dreamers in the working 
classes, both in France and elsewhere, who look for- 
ward to a social state when all men will work for the 
same wages, — when the Meissonier of the day will be 
paid like a sign-painter, and the sign-painter like a 
white-washer, and all three perform each other's tasks 
by turns for equality of agreeableness in the work ; but 
these dreams are only possible in extreme ignorance, 
and lie quite outside of an}' theories to be seriously 
considered. 

Religious intolerance, when quite sincere and not 
mixed up with social contempt or political hatred, is 
founded upon a remarkable confusion of ideas, which is 
this. The persecutor assumes that the heretic know- 
ingly and maliciously resists the will of God in reject- 
ing the theology which he knows that God desires him 
to receive. This is a confusion between the mental 
states of the believer and the unbeliever, and it does 
not accurately describe either, for the believer of course 
accepts the doctrine, and the unbeliever does not reject 
it as coming from God, but precisely because he is con- 
vinced that it has a purely human origin. 

" Are you a Puseyite? " was a question put to a lady 
in my hearing ; and she at once answered, " Certainly 
not, I should be ashamed of being a Puseyite." Here 
was a confusion between her present mental state and 



CONFUSIONS. 285 

her supposed possible mental state as a Puseyite ; for it 
is impossible to be a real Puseyite and at the same 
time to think of one's belief with an inward sense of 
shame. A believer always thinks that his belief is 
simply the truth, and nobody feels ashamed of believ- 
ing what is true. Even concealment of a belief does 
not imply shame ; and those who have been compelled, 
in self-defence, to hide their real opinions, have been 
ashamed, if at all, of hiding and not of having them. 

A confusion common to all who do not think, and 
avoided only with the greatest difficulty by those who 
do, is that between their own knowledge and the knowl- 
edge possessed by another person who has different 
tastes, different receptive powers, and other opportuni- 
ties. They cannot imagine that the world does not 
appear the same to him that it appears to them. They 
do not really believe that he can feel quite differently 
from themselves and still be in every respect as sound 
in mind and as intelligent as they are. The incapacity 
to imagine a different mental condition is strikingly 
manifested in what we call the Philistine mind, and is 
one of its strongest characteristics. The true Philistine 
thinks that every form of culture which opens out a 
world that is closed against himself leaves the votary 
exactly where he was before. " I cannot imagine why 
3 r ou live in Italy," said a Philistine to an acquaintance ; 
"nothing could induce me to live in Italy." He did 
not take into account the difference of gifts and culture, 
but supposed the person he addressed to have just his 
own mental condition, the only one that he was able to 
conceive, whereas, in fact, that person was so endowed 



286 CONFUSIONS. 

and so educated as to enjoy Italy in the supreme degree. 
He spoke the purest Italian with perfect ease ; he had a 
considerable knowledge of Italian literature and an- 
tiquities ; his love of natural beauty amounted to an 
insatiable passion ; and from his youth he had delighted 
in architecture and painting. Of these gifts, tastes, 
and acquirements the Philistine was simply destitute. 
For him Italy could have had no meaning. Where the 
other found unfailing interest he would have suffered 
from unrelieved ennui, and would have been continually 
looking back, with the intolerable longing of nostalgia, 
to the occupations of his English home. In the same 
spirit a French bourgeois once complained in my hear- 
ing that too much space was given to foreign affairs in 
the newspapers, " car, vous comprenez, cela n'interesse 
pas." This was simply an attribution of his personal 
apathy to everybody else. Certainly, as a nation, the 
French take less interest in foreign affairs than we do, 
but they do take some interest, and the degree of it is 
exactly reflected by the importance given to foreign 
affairs in their journals, always greatest in the best of 
them. An Englishman said, also in my hearing, that 
to have a library was a mistake, as a library was of no 
use ; he admitted that a few books might be useful if 
the owner read them through. Here, again, is the 
attribution of one person's experience to all cases. 
This man had never himself felt the need of a library, 
and did not know how to use one. He could not realize 
the fact that a few books only allow you to read, whilst 
a library allows jou to pursue a study. He could not 
at all imagine what the word ' ' library " means to a 



CONFUSIONS. 287 

scholar, — that it means the not being stopped at every 
turn for want of light, the not being exposed to scorn- 
ful correction by men of inferior ability and inferior 
industry, whose only superiority is the great and terrible 
one of living within a cabfare of the British Museum. 
I remember reading an account of the establishment 
of a Greek professorship in a provincial town, and it 
was wisely proposed, by one who understood the diffi- 
culties of a scholar remote from the great libraries, that 
provision should be made for the accumulation Of books 
for the use of the future occupants of the chair, but 
the trustees (honest men of business, who had no idea 
of a scholar's wants and necessities) said that each 
professor must provide his own library, just as road 
commissioners advertise that a surveyor must have his 
own horse. 

One of the most serious reasons why it is imprudent 
to associate with people whose opinions you do not wish 
to be made responsible for is that others will confound 
you with them. There is an old Latin proverb, and 
also a French one, to the effect that if a man knows 
what your friends are, he knows what 3-ou are yourself. 
These proverbs are not true, but the}^ well express the 
popular confusion between having something in common 
and having everything in common. If you are on 
friendly terms with clergymen, it is inferred that 3 T ou 
have a clerical mind ; when the reason may be that you 
are a scholar living in the countay, and can find no 
scholarship in 3'our neighborhood except in the parson- 
age houses. You associate with foreigners, and are 
supposed to be unpatriotic ; when in truth you are as 



288 CONFUSIONS. 

patriotic as any rational and well-informed creature 
can be, but have a faculty for languages that you like 
to exercise in conversation. This kind of confusion 
takes no account of the indisputable fact that men con- 
stantly associate together on the ground of a single 
pursuit that they have in common, often a mere amuse- 
ment, or because, in spite of every imaginable differ- 
ence, they are drawn together by one of those mysterious 
natural affinities which are so obscure in their origin 
and action that no human intelligence can explain 
them. 

Not only are a man's tastes liable to be confounded 
with those of his personal acquaintances, but he may 
find some trade attributed to him, by a perfectly irra- 
tional association of ideas, because it happens to be 
prevalent in the country where he lives. I have known 
instances of men supposed to have been in the cotton 
trade simply because they had lived in Lancashire, and 
of others supposed to be in the mineral oil trade for no 
other reason than because they had lived in a part of 
France where mineral oil is found. 

Professional men are usually very much alive to the 
clanger of confusion as affecting their success in life. If 
you are known to do two things, a confusion gets estab- 
lished between the two, and you are no longer classed 
with that ease and decision which the world finds to be 
convenient. It therefore becomes a part of worldly 
wisdom to keep one of the occupations in obscurity, 
and if that is not altogether possible, then to profess 
as loudly and as frequently as 3'ou can that it is entirely 
secondary and only a refreshment after more serious 



CONFUSIONS. 289 

toils. Many years ago a well-known surgeon published 
a set of etchings, and the merit of them was so danger- 
ously conspicuous, so superior, in fact, to the average 
of professional work, that he felt constrained to keep 
those too clever children in their places by a quotation 

from Horace, — 

" O laborum 
Dulce lenimen ! " 

To present one's self to the world always in one char- 
acter is a great help to success, and maintains the 
stability of a position. The kings in the story-books 
and on playing cards who have always their crowns on 
their heads and sceptres in their hands, appear to enjoy 
a decided advantage over modern royalty, which dresses 
like other people and enters into common interests and 
pursuits. Literary men admire the prudent self-control 
of our literary sovereign, Tennyson, who by his rigorous 
abstinence from prose takes care never to appear in 
public without his singing robes and his crown of laurel. 
Had he carelessly and familiarly employed the commoner 
vehicle of expression, there would have been a confusion 
of two Tennysons in the popular idea, whilst at present 
his name is as exclusively associated with the exquisite 
music of his verse as that of Mozart with another kind 
of melody. 

The great evil of confusions, as they affect conversa- 
tion, is that they constantly place a man of accurate 
mental habits in such trying situations that, unless he 
exercises the most watchful self-control, he is sure to 
commit the sin of contradiction. We have all of us 
met with the lady who does not think it necessary to 
19 



290 CONFUSIONS. 

distinguish between one person and another, who will 
tell a story of some adventure as having happened to 
A, when in reality it happened to B ; who will attribute 
sayings and opinions to C, when they properly belong to 
D ; and deliberately maintain that it is of no conse- 
quence whatever, when some suffering lover of accuracy 
undertakes to set her right. It is in vain to argue that 
there realty does exist, in the order of the universe, a 
distinction between one person and another, though 
both belong to the human race ; and that organisms are 
generally isolated, though there has been an exception 
in the case of the Siamese twins. The death of the 
wonderful swimmer who attempted to descend the 
rapids of Niagara afforded an excellent opportunity 
for compounders. In France they all confounded him 
with Captain Boy ton, who swam with an apparatus ; and 
when poor Webb was sucked under the whirlpool they 
said, " You see that, after all, his inflated dress was of 
no avail." Fame of a higher kind does not escape 
from similar confusions. On the death of George Eliot, 
French readers of English novels lamented that they 
would have nothing more from the pen that wrote 
"John Halifax," and a cultivated Frenchman ex- 
pressed his regret for the author of ' ' Adam Bede " 
and "Uncle Tom's Cabin." 1 

Men who have trained themselves in habits of accu- 
rate observation often have a difficulty in realizing the 
confused mental condition of those who simply receive 

1 A French critic recently observed that his countrymen knew 
little of the tragedy of " Macbeth " except the familiar line " To be 
or not to be, that is the question ! " 



CONFUSIONS. 291 

impressions without comparison and classification. A 
fine field for confused tourists is architecture. The}^ go 
to France and Italy, they talk about what they have 
seen, and leave you in bewilderment, until }'Ou make the 
discovery that the}^ have substituted one building for 
another, or, better still, mixed two different edifices 
inextricably together. Foreigners of this class are 
quite unable to establish any distinction between the 
Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbe} r , because 
both have towers ; and they are not clear about the 
difference between the British Museum and the National 
Gallery, because there are columns in the fronts of 
both. 1 English tourists will stay some time in Paris, 
and afterwards not be able to distinguish between 
photographs of the Louvre and the Hotel de Ville. 
We need not be surprised that people who have never 
studied architecture at all should not be sure whether 
St. Paul's is a Gothic building or not, but the wonder 
is that they seem to retain no impressions received 
merely by the eye. One would think that the eye 
alone, without knowledge, would be enough to estab- 
lish a distinction between one building and another 
altogether different from it ; yet it is not so. 

I cannot close this chapter without some allusion to 

1 I never make a statement of this kind without remembering 
instances, even when it does not seem worth while to mention 
them particularly. It is not of much use to quote what one has 
heard in conversation, but here are two instances in print. Eeclus, 
the French geographer, in "La Terre a Vol d'Oiseau," gives a 
woodcut of the Houses of Parliament and calls it "L'Abbaye de 
Westminster." The same error has even occurred in a French 
art periodical. 



292 CONFUSIONS. 

a craft} 7 employment of words only too well understood 
already by those who influence the popular mind. There 
is such a natural tendency to confusion in all ordinary 
human beings that if you repeatedly present to them two 
totally distinct things at the same time, the} T will, before 
long, associate them so closely as to consider them in- 
separable by their very nature. This is the reason why 
all those branches of education that train the mind in 
analysis are so valuable. To be able to distinguish 
between accidental connections of things or characteris- 
tics and necessary connections, is one of the best powers 
that education bestows' upon us. By far the greater 
number of erroneous popular notions are due simply to 
the inabilit}- to make this distinction which belongs to 
all undisciplined minds. Calumnies, that have great in- 
fluence over such minds, must lose their power as the 
habit of analj'sis enables people to separate ideas which 
the uncultivated mingle together. 

Insufficient analysis leads to a very common sort of 
confusion between the defectiveness of a part only and 
a defect pervading the whole. An invention (as often 
happens) does not visibly succeed on the first trial, and 
then the whole of the common public will at once de- 
clare the invention to be bad, when, in reality, it may 
be a good invention with a local defect, easily remedi- 
able. Suppose that a yacht misses stays, the common 
sort of criticism would be to sa} T that she was a bad 
boat, when, in fact, her hull and everything else might 
be thoroughly well made, and the defect be due onry to 
a miscalculation in the placing of her canvas. I have 
myself seen a small steel boat sink at her anchorage, 



CONFUSIONS. 293 

and a crowd laugh at her as badly contrived, when 
her only defect was the unobserved starting of a rivet. 
The boat was fished up, the rivet replaced, and she 
leaked and sank no more. When Stephenson's loco- 
motive did not go because its wheels slid on the rails, 
the vulgar spectators were delighted with the supposed 
failure of a benefactor of the human species, and set 
up a noise of jubilant derision. The invention, they 
had decided, was of no good, and they sang their own 
foolish gaudeamus igitur. Stephenson at once per- 
ceived that the only defect was want of weight, and he 
immediately proceeded to remedy it by loading the 
machine with ballast. So it is in thousands of cases. 
The common mind, untrained in analysis, condemns 
the whole as a failure, when the defect lies in some 
small part which the specialist, trained in analysis, 
seeks for and discovers. 

I have not touched upon the confusions due to the 
decline of the intellectual powers. In that case the 
reason is to be sought for in the condition of the brain, 
and there is, I believe, no remedy. In healthy people, 
enjoying the complete vigor of their faculties, confusions 
are simply the result of carelessness and indolence, and 
are proper subjects for sarcasm. With senile confusions 
the case is very different. To treat them with hard, 
sharp, decided correction, as is so often done by people 
of vigorous intellect, is a most cruel abuse of power. 
Yet it is difficult to say what ought to be done when an 
old person falls into manifest errors of this kind. Simple 
acquiescence is in this case a pardonable abandonment 
of truth, but there are situations in which it is not 



294 CONFUSIONS. 

possible. Then you find yourself compelled to show 
where the confusion lies. You do it as gently as may 
be, but } 7 ou fail to convince, and awaken that tenacious, 
unyielding opposition which is a characteristic of de- 
cline in its earlier stages. All that can be said is, that 
when once it has become evident that confusions are 
not careless but senile, they ought to be passed over if 
possible, and if not, then treated with the very utmost 
delicacy and gentleness. 



THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 295 



ESSAY XXI. 

THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 

A MONGST the common injustices of the world 
•*■ ^ there have been few more complete than its 
reprobation of the state of mind and manner of life 
that have been called Bohemianism ; and so closely is 
that reprobation attached to the word that I would 
gladly have substituted some other term for the better 
Bohemianism had the English language provided me 
with one. It may, however, be a gain to justice itself 
that we should be compelled to use the same expres- 
sion, qualified only by an adjective, for two states of 
existence that are the good and the bad conditions of 
the same, as it will tend to make us more charitable to 
those whom we must always blame, and } T et may blame 
with a more or less perfect understanding of the causes 
that led them into error. 

The lower forms of Bohemianism are associated with 
several kinds of vice, and are therefore justly disliked 
by people who know the value of a well-regulated life, 
and, when at the worst, regarded by them with feel- 
ings of positive abhorrence. The vices connected with 
these forms of Bohemianism are idleness, irregularity, 
extravagance, drunkenness, and immorality ; and be- 
sides these vices the worst Bohemianism is associated 
with many repulsive faults that ma}' not be exactly 



296 THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 

vices, and yet are almost as much disliked by decent 
people. These faults are slovenliness, dirt, a degree 
of carelessness in matters of business, often scarcely 
to be distinguished from dishonesty, and habitual neg- 
lect of the decorous observances that are inseparable 
from a high state of civilization. 

After such an account of the worst Bohemianism, in 
which, as the reader perceives, I have extenuated noth- 
ing, it may seem almost an act of temerity to advance 
the theory that this is only the bad side of a state of 
mind and feeling that has its good and perfectly 
respectable side also. If this seems difficult to" be- 
lieve, the reader has only to consider how certain 
other instincts of humanity have also their good and 
bad developments. The religious and the sexual in- 
stincts, in their best action, are on the side of national 
and domestic order, but in their worst action they pro- 
duce sanguinary quarrels, ferocious persecutions, and 
the excesses of the most degrading sensuality. It is 
therefore by no means a new theory that a human 
instinct may have a happy or an unfortunate develop- 
ment, and it is not a reason for rejecting Bohemianism, 
without unprejudiced examination, that the worst forms 
of it are associated with evil. 

Again, before going to the raison d'etre of Bohemi- 
anism, let me point to one consideration of great impor- 
tance to us if we desire to think quite justly. It is, 
and has alwa}^s been, a characteristic of Bohemianism 
to be extremely careless of appearances, and to live 
outside the shelter of hypocrisy ; so its vices are far 
more visible than the same vices when practised by 



THE NOBLE BOIIEMIANISM. 297 

men of the world, and incomparably more offensive to 
persons with a strong sense of what is called ' ' pro- 
priety." At the time when the worst form of Bohemi- 
anism was more common than it is now, its most 
serious vices were also the vices of the best society. 
If the Bohemian drank to excess, so did the nobility 
and gentry ; if the Bohemian had a mistress, so had 
the most exalted personages. The Bohemian was not 
so much blamed for being a sepulchre as for being an 
ill-kept sepulchre, and not a whited sepulchre like the 
rest. It was far more his slovenliness and poverty than 
his graver vices that made him offensive to a corrupt 
society with fine clothes and ceremonious manners. 

Bohemianism and Philistinism are the terms b} T 
which, for want of better, we designate two opposite 
ways of estimating wealth and culture. There are two 
categories of advantages in wealth, — the intellect- 
ual and the material. The intellectual advantages are 
leisure to think and read, travel, and intelligent con- 
versation. The material advantages are large and 
comfortable houses, tables well served and abundant, 
good coats, clean linen, fine dresses and diamonds, 
horses, carriages, servants, hot-houses, wine-cellars, 
shootings. Evidently the most perfect condition of 
wealth would unite both classes of advantages ; but 
this is not always, or often, possible, and it so hap- 
pens that in most situations a choice has to be made 
between them. The Bohemian is the man who with 
small means desires and contrives to obtain the intel- 
lectual advantages of wealth, which he considers to 
be leisure to think and read, travel, and intelligent 



298 THE NOBLE B0HEMIAN1SM. 

conversation. The Philistine is the man who, whether 
his means are small or large, devotes himself wholly 
to the attainment of the other set of advantages, — a 
large house, good food and wine, clothes, horses, and 
servants. 

The Philistine gratifies his passion for comfort to a 
wonderful extent, and thousands of ingenious people 
are incessantly laboring to make his existence more 
comfortable still, so that the one great inconvenience 
he is threatened with is the super-multiplication of con- 
veniences. Now there is a certain noble Bohemianism 
which perceives that the Philistine life is not really so 
rich as it appears, that it has only some of the advan- 
tages which ought to belong to riches, and these not 
quite the best advantages ; and this noble Bohemian- 
ism makes the best advantages its first aim, being con- 
tented with such a small measure of riches as, when 
ingenious^ and skilfully employed, may secure them. 

A highly developed material luxury, such as that 
which fills our modern universal exhibitions and is the 
great pride of our age, has in itself so much the appear- 
ance of absolute civilization that any proposal to do 
without it may seem like a return to savagery ; and 
Bohemianism is exposed to the accusation of discour- 
aging arts and manufactures. There is a physical side 
to Bohemianism to be considered later ; and there may, 
indeed, be some connection between Bohemianism and 
the life of a red Indian who roams in his woods and 
contents himself with a low standard of physical well- 
being. The fair statement of the case between Bohe- 
mianism and the civilization of arts and manufactures 



THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 299 

is as follows : the intelligent Bohemian does not de- 
spise them ; on the contrary, when he can afford it, 
he encourages them and often surrounds himself with 
beautiful things ; but he will not barter his mental 
liberty in exchange for them, as the Philistine does 
so readily. If the Bohemian simply prefers sordid 
idleness to the comfort which is the reward of indus- 
try, he has no part in the higher Bohemianism, but 
combines the Philistine fault of intellectual apathy 
with the Bohemian fault of standing aloof from indus- 
trial civilization. If a man abstains from furthering 
the industrial civilization of his country he is only 
excusable if he pursues some object of at least equal 
importance. Intellectual civilization really is such an 
object, and the noble Bohemianism is excusable for 
serving it rather than that other civilization of arts 
and manufactures which has such numerous servants 
of its own. If the Bohemian does not redeem his 
negligence of material things by superior intellectual 
brightness, he is half a Philistine, he is destitute of 
what is best in Bohemianism (I had nearly written of 
all that is worth having in it), and his contempt for 
material perfection has no longer any charm, because 
it is not the sacrifice of a lower merit to a higher, but 
the blank absence of the lower merit not compensated 
or condoned by the presence of anything nobler or 
better. 

Bohemianism and Philistinism are alike in combin- 
ing self-indulgence with asceticism, but they are ascetic 
or self-indulgent in opposite directions. Bohemianism 
includes a certain self-indulgence, on the intellectual 



300 THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 

side, in the pleasures of thought and observation and 
in the exercise of the imaginative faculties, combining 
this with a certain degree of asceticism on the physical 
side, not a severe religious asceticism, but a disposi- 
tion, like that of a thorough soldier or traveller, to do 
without luxury and comfort, and take the absence of 
them g&yly when they are not to be had. The self- 
indulgence of Philistinism is in bodily comfort, of 
which it has never enough ; its asceticism consists in 
denying itself leisure to read and think, and opportu- 
nities for observation. 

The best way of describing the two principles will be 
to give an account of two human lives that exemplified 
them. These shall not be described from imagination, 
but from accurate memory ; and I will not have recourse 
to the easy artifice of selecting an unfavorable example 
of the class with which I happen to have a minor degree 
of personal sympathy. My Philistine shall be one whom 
I sincerely loved and heartily respected. He was an 
admirable example of eve^thing that is best and most 
worthy in the Philistine civilization ; and I believe that 
nobody who ever came into contact with him, or had 
dealings with him, received any other impression than 
this, that he had a natural right to the perfect respect 
which surrounded him. The 3^011 nger son of a poor 
gentleman, he began life with narrow means, and fol- 
lowed a profession in a small provincial town. By 
close attention and industry he saved a considerable 
sum of money, which he lost entirely through the dis- 
honesty of a trusted but untrustworttry acquaintance. 
He had other mishaps, which but little disturbed his 



THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 301 

serenity, and he patiently amassed enough to make 
himself independent. In every relation of life he was 
not only above reproach, he was much more than that : 
he was a model of what men ought to be, yet seldom 
are, in their conduct towards others. He was kind to 
every one, generous to those who needed his generosity, 
and, though strict with himself, tolerant towards aber- 
rations that must have seemed to him strangely unrea- 
sonable. He had great natural dignity, and was a 
gentleman in all his wa} T s, with an old-fashioned grace 
and courtesy. He had no vanity ; there may have been 
some pride as an ingredient in his character, but if so 
it was of a kind that could hurt nobody, for he was as 
simple and straightforward in his intercourse with the 
poor as he was at ease with the rich. 

After this description (which is so far from being 
overcharged that I have omitted, for the sake of brev- 
ity, many admirable characteristics), the reader may 
ask in what could possibly consist the Philistinism of a 
nature that had attained such excellence. The answer 
is that it consisted in the perfect willingness with which 
he remained outside of every intellectual movement, 
and in the restriction of his mental activity to riches 
and religion. He used to say that "a man must be 
contentedly ignorant of many things," and he lived in 
this contented ignorance. He knew nothing of the 
subjects that awaken the passionate interest of in- 
tellectual men. He knew no language but his own, 
bought no books, knew nothing about the fine arts, 
never travelled, and remained satisfied with the life 
of his little provincial town. Totally ignorant of all 



302 THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 

foreign literatures, ancient or modern, he was at the 
same time so slightly acquainted with that of his own 
country that he had not read, and scarcely even knew 
by name, the most famous authors of his own genera- 
tion. His little bookcase was filled almost exclusively 
with evangelical sermons and commentaries. This is 
Philistinism on the intellectual side, the mental inert- 
ness that remains " contentedly ignorant" of almost 
everything that a superior intellect cares for. But, 
besides this, there is also a Philistinism on the physical 
side, a physical inertness ; and in this, too, my friend 
was a real Philistine. In spite of great natural strength, 
he remained inexpert in all manly exercises, and so 
had not enjoyed life on that side as he might have 
done, and as the Bohemian generally contrives to do. 
He belonged to that class of men who, as soon as they 
reach middle age, are scarcely more active than the 
chairs they sit upon, the men who would fall from a 
horse if it were livery, upset a boat if it were light, and 
be drowned if they fell into the water. Such men can 
walk a little on a road, or they can sit in a carriage 
and be dragged about by horses. B}^ this physical 
inertia my friend was deprived of one set of impres- 
sions, as he was deprived by his intellectual inertia of 
another. He could not enjoy that close intimacy with 
nature which a Bohemian generally finds to be an im- 
portant part of existence. 

I wonder if it ever occurred to him to reflect, in the 
tedious hours of too tranquil age, how much of what is 
best in the world had been simply missed by him ; how 
he had missed all the variety and interest of travel, the 



THE NOBLE BOREMIANISM. 303 

charm of intellectual society, the influences of genius, 
and even the physical excitements of healthy out-door 
amusements. When I think what a magnificent world 
it is that we inhabit, how much natural beauty there is 
in it, how much admirable human work in literature and 
the fine arts, how many living men and women there are 
in each generation whose acquaintance a wise man would 
travel far to seek, and value infinitely when he had found 
it, I cannot avoid the conclusion that my friend might 
have lived as he did in a planet far less richly endowed 
than ours, and that after a long life he went out of the 
world without having really known it. 

I have said that the intelligent Bohemian is generally 
a man of small or moderate means, whose object is to 
enjoy the best advantages (not the most visible) of 
riches. In his view these advantages are leisure, travel, 
reading, and conversation. His estimate is different 
from that of the Philistine, who sets his heart on the 
lower advantages of riches, sacrificing leisure, travel, 
reading, and conversation, in order to have a larger 
house and more servants. But how, without riches, is 
the Bohemian to secure the advantages that he desires, 
for the} 7 also belong to riches? There lies the difficulty, 
and the Bohemian's way of overcoming it constitutes 
the romance of his existence. In absolute destitution 
the intelligent Bohemian life is not possible. A little 
money is necessary for it, and the art and craft of 
Bohemianism is to get for that small amount of money 
such an amount of leisure, reading, travel, and good 
conversation as may suffice to make life interesting. 
The way in which an old-fashioned Bohemian usually 



304 THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 

set about it was this : he treated material comfort and 
outward appearances as matters of no consequence, 
accepting them when they came in his way, but endur- 
ing the privation of them gayly. He learned the art of 
living on a little. 

" Je suis pauvre, tres pauvre, et vis pourtant fort bien 
C'est parce que je vis comme les gens de rien." 1 

He spent the little that he had, first for what was 
really necessary, and next for what really gave him 
pleasure, but he spent hardly anything in deference to 
the usages of societ}^. In this way he got what he 
wanted. His books were second-hand and ill bound, 
but he had books and read them ; his clothes were 
shabby, 3 7 et still they kept him warm ; he travelled in 
all sorts of cheap ways and frequently on foot ; he lived 
a good deal in some unfashionable quarters in a capital 
city, and saw much of art, nature, and humanity. 

To exemplify the true theory of Bohemianism let me 
describe from memory two rooms, one of them inhabited 
by an English lady, not at all Bohemian, the other by a 
German of the coarser sex who was essentially and 
thoroughly Bohemian. The lady's room was not a 
drawing-room, being a reasonable sort of sitting-room 
without any exasperating inutilities, but it was extremely, 
excessively comfortable. Half hidden amongst its ma- 
terial comforts might be found a little rosewood book- 
case containing a number of pretty volumes in purple 
morocco that were seldom, if ever, opened. My German 
Bohemian was a steady reader in six languages ; and if 

1 Rodolphe, in "L'Honneur et 1' Argent." 






THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 305 

he had seen such a room as that he would probably 
have criticised it as follows. He would have said, " It 
is rich in superfluities, but has not what is necessary. 
The carpet is superfluous ; plain boards are quite com- 
fortable enough. One or two cheap chairs and tables 
might replace this costly furniture. That pretty rose- 
wood bookcase holds the smallest number of books at 
the greatest cost, and is therefore contrary to true 
economy ; give me, rather, a sufficiency of long deal 
shelves all innocent of paint. What is the use of fine 
bindings and gilt edges ? This little library is miserably 
poor. It is all in one language, and does not represent 
even English literature adequately ; there are a few 
novels, books of poems, and travels, but I find neither 
science nor philosophy. Such a room as that, with all 
its comfort, would seem to me like a prison. My mind 
needs wider pastures." I remember his own room, a 
place to make a rich Englishman shudder. One climbed 
up to it by a stone corkscrew-stair, half-ruinous, in an 
old mediaeval house. It was a large room, with a bed in 
one corner, and it was wholly destitute 01 anything re- 
sembling a carpet or a curtain. The remaining furniture 
consisted of two or three rush-bottomed chairs, one large 
cheap lounging- chair, and two large plain tables. There 
were plenty of shelves (common deal, unpainted) , and on 
them an immense litter of books in different languages, 
most of them in paper covers, and bought second- 
hand, but in readable editions. In the way of material 
luxury there was a pot of tobacco; and if a friend 
dropped in for an evening a jug of ale would make its 
appearance. My Bohemian was shabby in his dress, 
20 



306 THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 

and unfashionable ; but he had seen more, read more, 
and passed more hours in intelligent conversation than 
many who considered themselves his superiors. The 
entire material side of life had been systematically 
neglected, in his case, in order that the intellectual 
side might flourish. It is hardly necessary to observe 
that any attempt at luxury or visible comfort, any con- 
formity to fashion, would have been incompatible, on 
small means, with the intellectual existence that this 
German scholar enjoyed. 

Long ago I knew an English Bohemian who had a 
small income that came to him very irregularly. He 
had begun life in a profession, but had quitted it that 
he might travel and see the world, which he did in the 
oddest, most original fashion, often enduring privation, 
but never ceasing to enjoy life deeply in his own wa}-, 
and to accumulate a mass of observations which would 
have been quite invaluable to an author. In him the 
two activities, physical and mental, were alike so ener- 
getic that they might have led to great results had they 
been consistently directed to some private or public end ; 
but unfortunately he remained satisfied with the exist- 
ence of an observant wanderer who has no purpose 
beyond the healthy exercise of his faculties. In use- 
fulness to others he was not to be compared with my 
good and admirable Philistine, but in the art of getting 
for himself what is best in the world he was by far the 
more accomplished of the two. He fully enjoyed both 
the physical and the intellectual life ; he could live al- 
most like a red Indian, and yet at the same time carry 
in his mind the most recent results of European thought 



THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 307 

and science. His distinguishing characteristic was a 
heroic contempt for comfort, in which he rather re- 
sembled a soldier in war-time than any self-indulgent 
civilian. He would sleep anj'where, — in his boat un- 
der a sail, in a hayloft, under a hedge if belated, and 
he would go for days together without an} 7 regular 
meal. He dressed roughly, and his clothes became old 
before he renewed them. He kept no servant, and 
lived in cheap lodgings in towns, or hired one or two 
empty rooms and adorned them with a little portable 
furniture. In the country he contrived to make very 
economical arrangements in farmhouses, by which he 
was fed and lodged quite as well as he ever cared to 
be. It would be difficult to excel him in simple manli- 
ness, in the quiet courage that accepts a disagreeable 
situation or faces a dangerous one ; and he had the 
manliness of the mind as well as that of the body ; he 
estimated the world for what it is worth, and cared 
nothing for its transient fashions either in appearances 
or opinion. I am sorry that he was a useless member 
of society, — if, indeed, such an eccentric is to be called 
a member of society at all, — but if uselessness is blarn- 
able he shares the blame, or ought in justice to share 
it, with a multitude of most respectable gentlemen and 
ladies who receive nothing but approbation from the 
world. 

Except this fault of uselessness there was nothing to 
blame in this man's manner of life, but his want of pur- 
pose and discipline made his fine qualities seem almost 
without value. And now comes the question whether 
the fine qualities of the useless Bohemian may not be 



308 THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 

of some value in a life of a higher kind. I think it is 
evident that they ma}^, for if the Bohemian can cheer- 
fully sacrifice luxury for some mental gain he has made 
a great step in the direction of the higher life, and only 
requires a purpose and a discipline to attain it. Com- 
mon men are completely enslaved by their love of com- 
fort, and whoever has emancipated himself from this 
thraldom has gained the first and most necessary vic- 
tory. The use that he will make of it depends upon 
himself. If he has high purposes, his Bohemianism 
will be ennobled by them, and will become a most pre- 
cious element in his character ; and if his purposes are 
not of the highest, the Bohemian element may still be 
very valuable if accompanied b}^ self-discipline. Na- 
poleon cannot be said to have had high purposes, but 
his Bohemianism was admirable. A man who, having 
attained success, with boundless riches at his disposal, 
could quit the luxury of his palaces and sleep anj'- 
where, in any poor farmhouse, or under the stars \)y 
the fire of a bivouac, and be satisfied with poor meals 
at the most irregular hours, showed that, however he 
may have estimated luxury, he was at least entirely 
independent of it. The model monarch in this respect 
was Charles XII. of Sweden, who studied his own per- 
sonal comfort as little as if he had been a private soldier. 
Some royal commanders have carried luxury into war 
itself, but not to their advantage. When Napoleon III. 
went in his carriage to meet his fate at Sedan the roads 
were so encumbered by wagons belonging to the Im- 
perial household as to impede the movements of the 
troops. 



THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 309 

There is often an element of Bohemianism where we 
should least expect to find it. There is something of 
it in our English aristocracy, though it is not called 
Bohemianism here because it is not accompanied by 
poverty ; but the spirit that sacrifices luxury to rough 
travelling is, so far, the true Bohemian spirit. In the 
aristocrac} 7 , however, such sacrifices are only tempo- 
rary ; and a rough life accepted for a few weeks or 
months gives the charm of a restored freshness to 
luxury on returning to it. The class in which the 
higher Bohemianism has most steadily flourished is 
the artistic and literary class, and here it is visible 
and recognizable because there is often poverty enough 
to compel the choice between the objects of the in- 
telligent Bohemian and those of ordinary men. The 
early life of Goldsmith, for example, was that of a 
genuine Bohemian. He had scarcely any money, 
and yet he contrived to get for himself what the 
intelligent Bohemian always desires, namely, leisure 
to read and think, travel, and interesting conversation. 
When penniless and unknown he lounged about the 
world thinking and observing ; he travelled in Holland, 
France, Switzerland, and Italy, not as people do in 
railway carriages, but in leisurely intercourse with the 
inhabitants. Notwithstanding his poverty he was re- 
ceived by the learned in different European cities, and, 
notably, heard Voltaire and Diderot talk till three 
o'clock in the morning. So long as he remained faithful 
to the true principles of Bohemianism he was happy 
in his own strange and eccentric wa} 7 , and all the 
anxieties, all the slavery of his later years were due 



310 THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 

to his apostasy from those principles. He no longer 
estimated leisure at its true value when he allowed him- 
self to be placed in such a situation that he was com- 
pelled to toil like a slave in order to clear off work that 
had been already paid for, such advances having been 
rendered necessary by expenditure on Philistine luxu- 
ries. He no longer enjoyed humble travel ■ but on his 
later tour in France with Mrs. Horneck and her two 
beautiful daughters, instead of enjoying the country in 
his own old simple innocent way, he allowed his mind 
to be poisoned with Philistine ideas, and constantly 
complained of the want of physical comfort, though 
he lived far more expensively than in his youth. The 
new apartments, taken on the success of the " Good- 
natured Man," consisted, says Irving, " of three rooms, 
which he furnished with mahogany sofas, card-tables, 
and bookcases ; with curtains, mirrors, and Wilton 
carpets." At the same time he went even beyond the 
precept of Polonius, for his garments were costlier 
than his purse could buy, and his entertainments were 
so extravagant as to give pain to his acquaintances. 
All this is a desertion of real Bohemian principles. 
Goldsmith ought to have protected his own leisure, 
which, from the Bohemian point of view, was incompara- 
bly more precious to himself than Wilton carpets and 
coats "of Tyrian bloom." 

Corot, the French landscape-painter, was a model 
of consistent Bohemianism of the best kind. When 
his father said, " You shall have £80 a year, your 
plate at my table, and be a painter; or you shall have 
£4,000 to start with if you will be a shop-keeper," his 



THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 311 

choice was made at once. He remained always faith- 
ful to true Bohemian principles, fully understanding 
the value of leisure, and protecting his artistic inde- 
pendence by the extreme simplicit} 7 of his living. He 
never gave way to the modern rage for luxuries, but 
in his latter years, when enriched by tardy professional 
success and hereditary fortune, he emplo3 7 ed his money 
in acts of fraternal generosit}^ to enable others to lead 
the intelligent Bohemian life. 

Wordsworth had in him a very strong element of 
Bohemianism. His long pedestrian rambles, his inter- 
est in humble life and familiar intercourse with the 
poor, his passion for wild nature, and preference of 
natural beauty to fine society, his simple and economi- 
cal habits, are enough to reveal the tendency. His 
" plain living and high thinking " is a thoroughly Bohe- 
mian idea, in striking opposition to the Philistine pas- 
sion for rich living and low thinking. There is a story 
that he was seen at a breakfast-table to cut open a 
new volume with a greasj^ butter-knife. To every lover 
of books this must seem horribly barbarous, yet at the 
same time it was Bohemian, in that Wordsworth valued 
the thought only and cared nothing for the material 
condition of the volume. I have observed a like in- 
difference to the material condition of books in other 
Bohemians, who took the most lively interest in their 
contents. I have also seen "bibliophiles" who had 
beautiful libraries in excellent preservation, and who 
loved to fondle fine copies of books that they never 
read. That is Philistine, it is the preference of mate- 
rial perfection to intellectual values. 



312 THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 

The reader is, I hope, fully persuaded by this time 
that the higher Bohemianism is compatible with every 
quality that deserves respect, and that it is not of ne- 
cessity connected with airy fault or failing. I may 
therefore mention as an example of it one of the purest 
and best characters whom it was ever my happiness to 
know. There was a strong element of noble Bohe- 
mianism in Samuel Palmer, the landscape-painter. 
" From time to time," according to his son, "he for- 
sook his easel, and travelled far away from London 
smoke to cull the beauties of some favorite country 
side. His painting apparatus was complete, but singu- 
larly simple, his dress and other bodily requirements 
simpler still ; so he could walk from village to hamlet 
easily carrying all he wanted, and utterly indifferent 
to luxury. With a good constitution it mattered little 
to him how humble were his quarters or how remote 
from so-called civilization. ' In exploring wild coun- 
try,' he writes, ; I have been for a fortnight together, 
uncertain each a&y whether I should get a bed under 
cover at night ; and about midsummer I have repeat- 
edly been walking all night to watch the mystic phenom- 
ena of the silent hours.' He enjoyed to the full this 
rough but not uncomfortable mode of travelling, and 
was better pleased to take his place, after a hard day's 
work, in some old chimney corner — joining on equal 
terms the village gossip — than to mope in the dull 
grandeur of a private room." 

Here are two of my Bohemian elements, — the love of 
travel and the love of conversation. As for the other 
element, — the love of leisure to think and read, — it 



THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 313 

is not visible in this extract (though the kind of travel 
described is leisurely) , but it was always present in the 
man. During the quiet, solitary progress by day and 
night there were ample opportunities for thinking, 
and as for reading we know that Palmer never stirred 
without a favorite author in his pocket, most frequently 
Milton or Virgil. To complete the Bohemian we only 
require one other characteristic, — contentment with a 
simple material existence; and we are told that "the 
painting apparatus was singularly simple, the dress and 
other bodily requirements simpler still." So here we 
have the intelligent Bohemian in his perfection. 

All this is the exact opposite of Philistine " common 
sense." A Philistine would not have exposed himself, 
voluntarily, to the certainty of poor accommodation. 
A Philistine would not have remained out all night ' ' to 
watch the mystic phenomena of the silent hours." In 
the absence of a railway he would have hired a carriage, 
and got through the wild country rapidly to arrive at 
a good dinner. Lastly, a Philistine would not have 
carried either Milton or Virgil in his pocket ; he would 
have had a newspaper. 

Some practical experience of the higher Bohemianism 
is a valuable part of education. It enables us to esti- 
mate things at their true worth, and to extract happiness 
from situations in which the Philistine is both dull and 
miserable. A true Bohemian, of the best kind, knows 
the value of mere shelter, of food enough to satisfy 
hunger, of plain clothes that will keep him sufficiently 
warm ; and in the things of the mind he values the 
liberty to use his own faculties as a kind of happiness 



314 THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM. 

in itself. His philosophy leads him to take an interest 
in talking with human beings of all sorts and conditions, 
and in different countries. He does not despise the 
poor, for, whether poor or rich in his own person, he 
understands simplicity of life, and if the poor man lives 
in a small cottage, he, too, has probably been lodged 
less spaciously still in some small hut or tent. He has 
lived often, in rough travel, as the poor live every day. 
I maintain that such tastes and experiences are val- 
uable both in prosperity and in .adversUy. If we are 
prosperous they enhance our appreciation of the things 
around us, and yet at the same time make us really 
know that thej r are not indispensable, as so many be- 
lieve them to be ; if we fall into adversity the}' prepare 
us to accept lightly and cheerfully what would be de- 
pressing privations to others. I know a painter who 
in consequence of some change in the public taste fell 
into adversity at a time when he had every reason to 
hope for increased success. Very fortunately for him, 
he had been a Bohemian in early life, — a respectable 
Bohemian, be it understood, — and a great traveller, so 
that he could easily dispense with luxuries. " To be 
still permitted to follow art is enough," he said ; so he 
reduced his expenses to the very lowest scale consistent 
with that pursuit, and lived as he had done before in 
the old Bohemian times. He made his old clothes last 
on, he slung a hammock in a very simple painting-room, 
and cooked his own dinner on the stove. With the 
canvas on his easel and a few books on a shelf he found 
that if existence was no longer luxurious it had not }^et 
ceased to be interesting. 



EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 315 



ESSAY XXII. 

OF COURTESY IN EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 

nr^HE universal principle of courtesy is that the cour- 
-*• teous person manifests a disposition to sacrifice 
something in favor of the person whom he desires to 
honor ; the opposite principle shows itself in a disposi- 
tion to regard our own convenience as paramount over 
every other consideration. 

Courtesy lives \>y a multitude of little sacrifices, not 
by sacrifices of sufficient importance to impose any 
burdensome sense of obligation. These little sacrifices 
may be both of time and money, but more of time, and 
the money sacrifice should be just perceptible, never 
ostentatious. 

The tendency of a hurried age, in which men under- 
take more work or more pleasure (hardest work of all !) 
than they are able properly to accomplish, is to abridge 
all forms of courtesy because the}^ take time, and to 
replace them by forms, if any forms survive, which cost 
as little time as possible. This wounds and injures 
courtes} 7 itself in its most vital part, for the essence of 
it is the willingness to incur that very sacrifice which 
modern hurry avoids. 

The first courtesy in epistolary communication is the 
mere writing of the letter. Except in cases where the 
letter itself is an offence or an intrusion, the mere 



81C EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 

making of it is an act of courtesy towards the receiver. 
The writer sacrifices his time and a trifle of inone} 7 in 
order that the receiver ma} 7 have some kind of news. 

It has ever been the custom to commence a letter 
with some expression of respect, affection, or good will. 
This is graceful in itself, and reasonable, being nothing 
more than the salutation with which a man enters the 
house of his friend, or his more ceremonious act of 
deference in entering that of a stranger or a superior. 
In times and seasons where courtesj 7 has not given way 
to hurry, or a selfish dread of unnecessary exertion, the 
opening form is maintained with a certain amplitude, 
and the substance of the letter is not reached in the first 
lines, which gently induce the reader to proceed. After- 
wards these forms are felt to involve an inconvenient 
sacrifice of time, and are ruthlessly docked. 

In justice to modern poverty in forms it is fair to take 
into consideration the simple truth, so easily overlooked, 
that we have to write thirty letters where our ancestors 
wrote one ; but the principle of sacrifice in courtes} 7 
always remains essentially the same ; and if of our 
more precious and more occupied time we consecrate a 
smaller portion to forms, it is still essential that there 
should be no appearance of a desire to escape from the 
kind of obligation which we acknowledge. 

The most essentially modern element of courtesy in 
letter-writing is the promptitude of our replies. This 
promptitude was not only unknown to our remote ances- 
tors, but even to our immediate predecessors. The} 7 
would postpone answering a letter for da} 7 s or weeks, 
in the pure spirit of procrastination, when the} T already 



EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 317 

possessed all the materials necessary for the answer. 
Such a habit would try our patience very severely, but 
our fathers seem to have considered it a part of their 
dignity to move slowly in correspondence. This tem- 
per even yet survives in official correspondence be- 
tween sovereigns, who still notify to each other their 
domestic events long after the publication of them in 
the newspapers. 

A prompt answer equally serves the purpose of the 
sender and the receiver. It is a great economy of time 
to answer promptly, because the receiver of the letter is 
so much gratified by the promptitude itself that he 
readily pardons brevity in consideration of it. An 
extremely short but prompt letter, that would look curt 
without its promptitude, is more polite than a much 
longer one written a few da} 7 s later. 

Prompt correspondents save all the time that others 
waste in excuses. I remember an author and editor 
whose S3 T stem imposed upon him the tax of perpetual 
apologizing. He always postponed writing until the 
delaj^ had put his correspondent out of temper, so that 
when at last he did write, which somehow happened 
ultimate!}', the first page was entirely occupied with 
apologies for his delay, as he felt that the necessity had 
arisen for soothing the ruffled feelings of his friend. 
It never occurred to him that the same amount of pen 
work which these apologies cost him would, if given 
earlier, have sufficed for a complete answer. A letter- 
writer of this sort must naturally be a bad man of busi- 
ness, and this gentleman was so. though he had excellent 
qualities of another order. 



318 EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 

I remember receiving a most extraordinary answer 
from a correspondent of this stamp. I wrote to him 
about a matter which was causing me some anxiety, and 
did not receive an answer for several weeks. At last 
the reply came, with the strange excuse that as he knew 
I had guests in my house he had delayed writing from 
a belief that I should not be able to attend to anything 
until after their departure. If such were always the 
effect of entertaining friends, what incalculable pertur- 
bation would be caused by hospitality in all private and 
public affairs ! 

The reader may, perhaps, have met with a collection 
of letters called the " Plumpton Correspondence," which 
was published by the Camden Societ} T in 1839. I have 
always been interested in this for family reasons, and 
also because the manuscript volume was found in the 
neighborhood where I lived in youth ; * but it does 
not require an} T blood connection with the now extinct 
house of Plumpton of Plumpton to take an interest in 
a collection of letters which gives so clear an insight 
into the epistolary customs of England in the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries. The first peculiarit}" that 
strikes the modern reader is the extreme care of almost 
all the writers, even when near relations, to avoid a 
curt and dry style, destitute of the ambages which were 
in those days esteemed an essential part of politeness. 
The only exception is a plain, straightforward gentleman, 
William Gascoyne, who heads his letters, "To my 
Uncle Plumpton be these delivered," or " To my Uncle 
Plumpton this letter be delivered in hast." He begins, 
1 In the library at Towneley Hall in Lancashire. 



EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 319 

" Uncle Plumpton, I recommend me unto you," and 
finishes, "Your nephew," simply, or still more laconi- 
cally, " Your." Such plainness is strikingly rare. The 
rule was, to be deliberately perfect in all epistolary 
observances, however near the relationship. Not that 
the forms used were hard forms, entirely fixed by usage 
and devoid of personal feeling and individuality. They 
appear to have been more flexible and living than our 
own, as they were more frequently varied according to 
the taste and sentiment of the writers. Sometimes, of 
course, they were perfunctory, but often they have an 
original and very graceful turn. One letter, which I 
will quote at length, contains curious evidence of the 
courtesy and discourtesy of those days. The forms 
used in the letter itself are perfect, but the writer com- 
plains that other letters have not been answered. 

In the reign of Hemy VII. Sir Robert Plumpton had 
a daughter, Dorothy, who was in the household of Lady 
Darcy (probably as a sort of maid of honor to her lady- 
ship), but was not quite pleased with her position, and 
wanted to go home to Plumpton. She had written to 
her father several times, but had received no answer, 
so she now writes again to him in these terms. The 
date of the letter is not fully given, as the year is want- 
ing ; but her parents were married in 1477, and her father 
died in 1523, at the age of seventy, after a life of strange 
vicissitudes. The reader will observe two leading char- 
acteristics in this letter, — that it is as courteous as if 
the writer were not related to the receiver, and as 
affectionate as if no forms had been observed. As 
was the custom in those days, the young lady gives her 



320 EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 

parents their titles of worldly honor, but she always 
adds to them the most affectionate filial expressions : 

To the right worshipfull and my most entyerly beloved, good, 
kind father, Sir liobart Plompton, knyght, lying at Plompton in 
Yorkshire, be thes delivered in hast. 

Ryght worshipfull father, in the most humble manneT 
that I can I recommend me to you, and to my lady my mother, 
and to all my brethren and sistren, whom I besech almyghtie 
God to mayntayne and preserve in prosperus health and 
encrese of worship, entyerly requiering you of your daly 
blessing; letting you wyt that I send to you mesuage, be 
Wryghame of Knarsbrugh, of my mynd, and how that he 
should desire you in my name to send for me to come home 
to you, and as yet I had no answere agane, the which desire 
my lady hath gotten knowledg. Wherefore, she is to me 
more better lady than ever she was before, insomuch that 
she hath promysed me hir good ladyship as long as ever she 
shall lyve; and if she or ye can fynd athing meyter for me 
in this parties or any other, she will helpe to promoote me to 
the uttermost of her puyssaunce. Wherefore, I humbly 
besech you to be so good and kind father unto me as to let 
me know your pleasure, how that ye will have me ordred, as 
shortly as it shall like you. And wryt to my lady, thanking 
hir good ladyship of hir so loving and tender kyndnesse 
shewed unto me, beseching hir ladyship of good contynewance 
thereof. And therefore I besech you to send a servant of yours 
to my lady and to me, and show now by your fatherly kynd- 
nesse that I am your child; for I have sent you dyverse 
messuages and wryttings, and I had never answere againe. 
Wherefore yt is thought in this parties, by those persones 
that list better to say ill than good, that ye have litle favor 
unto me ; the which error ye may now quench yf yt will like 
you to be so good and kynd father unto me. Also I besech 
you to send me a fine hatt and some good cloth to make me 
some kevercheffes. And thus I besech Jesu to have you in 



EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 321 

his blessed keeping to his pleasure, and your harts desire and 
comforth. Wryten at the Hirste, the xviii day of Maye. 
By your loving daughter, 

DORYTHE PLOMPTON. 

It may be worth while, for the sake of contrast, and 
that we ma}^ the better perceive the lost fragrance of the 
antique courtesy, to put the substance of this letter into 
the style of the present daj\ A modern 3'oung lady 
would probabry write as follows : — 

Hirst, May 18. 

Dear Papa, — Lady Darcy has found out that I want to 
leave her, but she has kindly promised to do what she can to 
find something else for me. I wish you would say what you 
think, and it would be as well, perhaps, if you would be so 
good as to drop a line to her ladyship to thank her. I have 
written to you several times, but got no answer, so people 
here say that you don't care very much for me. Would you 
please send me a handsome bonnet and some handkerchiefs? 
Best love to mamma and all at home. 

Your affectionate daughter, 

Dorothy Plumpton. 

This, I think, is not an unfair specimen of a modern 
letter. 1 The expressions of worship, of humble respect, 
have disappeared, and so far it may be thought that 
there is improvement, } T et that respect was not incom- 
patible with tender feeling ; on the contrary, it was 
closely associated with it, and expressions of sentiment 

1 In Prosper Merimee's " Correspondence " he gives the following 
as the authentic text of the letter in which Lady Florence Paget 
announced her elopement with the last Marquis of Hastings to her 
father : — 

"Dear Pa, as I knew you would never consent to my marriage with 
Lord Hastings, I was wedded to him to-day. I remain yours, etc." 
21 



322 EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 

have lost strength and vitality along with expressions 
of respect. Tenderness may be sometimes shown in 
modern letters, but it is rare ; and when it occurs it is 
generally accompanied by a degree of familiarity which 
our ancestors would have considered in bad taste. Dor- 
otiry Plumpton's own letter is far richer in the expres- 
sion of tender feeling than any modern letter of the 
courteous and ceremonious kind, or than any of those 
pale and commonplace communications from which deep 
respect and strong affection are almost equally excluded. 
Please observe, moreover, that the young lady had rea- 
son to be dissatisfied with her father for his neglect, 
which does not in the least diminish the filial courtesy 
of her style, but she chides him in the sweetest fashion, 
— " Show now by your fatherly kindness that I am 
your child." Could anything be prettier than that, 
though the reproach contained in it is really one of 
some severity? 

Dorothy's father, Sir Robert, puts the following super- 
scription on a letter to his wife, "To nry entyrely and 
right hartily beloved wife, Dame Agnes Plurnpton, be 
this Letter delivered." He begins his letter thus, " My 
deare hart, in nry most hartily wyse, I recommend mee 
unto 3 T ou ; " and he ends tenderly, " By your owne lover, 
Robert Plurnpton, Kt." She, on the contrary, though 
a faithful and brave wife, doing her best for her hus- 
band in a time of great trial, and enjo} T ing his full 
confidence, begins her letters, " Right worshipful Sir," 
and ends simply, "By your wife, Dame Agnes Plump- 
ton." She is so much absorbed bj r business that her 
expressions of feeling are rare and brief. " Sir, I am in 



EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 323 

good health, and all your children prays for your daly 
blessing. And all your servants is in good health and 
prays diligently for your good speed in your matters." 

The generally courteous tone of the letters of those 
da}^s may be judged of by the following example. The 
reader will observe how small a space is occupied with 
the substance of the letter in comparison with the ex- 
pressions of pure courtesy, and how simply aud hand- 
somely regret for the trespass is expressed : — 

To Ms worshipful Cosin, Sir Robart Plompton, Kt. 

Right reverend and worshipful Cosin, I commend me 
unto you as hertyly as I can, evermore desiring to heare of 
your welfare, the which I besech Jesu to continew to his 
pleasure, and your herts desire. Cosin, please you witt that 
I am enformed, that a poor man somtyme belonging to mee, 
called Umfrey Bell, hath trespased to a servant of youres, 
which I am sory for. Wherefore, Cosin, I desire and hartily 
pray you to take upp the matter into your own hands for my 
sake, and rewle him as it please you; and therein you wil do, 
as I may do that may be plesur to you, and my contry, the 
which I shalbe redy too, by the grace of God, who preserve 

you. 

By your own kynsman, 

Robart Warcopp, of Warcoppe. 

The reader has no doubt by this time enough of these 
old letters, which are not likely to possess much charm 
for him unless, like the present writer, he is rather of an 
antiquarian turn. 1 

1 For those who take an interest in such matters I may say that 
the last representative of the Phimptons died in France unmarried 
in 1749, and Plumpton Hall was barbarously pulled down by its 
purchaser, an ancestor of the present Earls of Harewood. The 



324 EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 

The quotations are enough to show some of the forms 
used in correspondence by our forefathers, forms that 
were right in their own day, when the state of society 
was mwe ceremonious and deferential, but no one would 
propose to revive them. We ma} 7 , however, still value 
and cultivate the beautifully courteous spirit that our 
ancestors possessed and express it in our own modern 
ways. 

I have already observed that the essentially modern 
form of courtesy is the rapidity of our replies. This, 
at least, is a virtue that we can resolutely cultivate and 
maintain. In some countries it is pushed so far that 
telegrams are very frequently sent when there is no need 
to emphyy the telegraph. The Arabs of Algeria are ex- 
tremely fond of telegraphing for its own sake : the notion 
of its rapidity pleases and amuses them ; they like to 
wield a power so wonderful. It is said that the Ameri- 
cans constantly employ the telegraph on very trivial 
occasions, and the habit is increasing in England and 
France. The secret desire of the present age is to find 
a plausible excuse for excessive brevity in correspond- 
ence, and this is supplied by the comparative costliness 
of telegraphing. It is a comfort that it allows you to 
send a single word. I have heard of a letter from a 
son to a father consisting of the Latin word Ibo, and 
of a still briefer one from the father to the son con- 
fined entirely to the imperative I. These miracles of 
brevity are only possible in letters between the most 

history of the family is very interesting, and the more so to me 
that it twice intermarried with my own. Dorothy Plumpton was 
a niece of the first Sir Stephen Hamerton. 



EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 325 

intimate friends or relations, but in telegraphy they are 
common. 

It is very difficult for courtesy to survive this modern 
passion for brevity, and we see it more and more 
openly cast aside. All the long phrases of politeness 
have been abandoned in English correspondence for a 
generation, except in formal letters to official or very 
dignified personages ; and the little that remains is re- 
duced to a mere shred of courteous or affectionate ex- 
pression. We have not, it is true, the detestable habit 
of abridging words, as our ancestors often did, but we 
cut our phrases short, and sometimes even words of 
courtesy are abridged in an unbecoming manner. Men 
will write D r Sir for Dear Sir. If I am dear enough to 
these correspondents for their sentiments of affection to 
be worth uttering at all, why should they be so chary 
of expressing them that they omit two letters from the 
very word which is intended to affect my feelings ? 

" If I be dear, if I be dear," 

as the poet says, why should my correspondent be- 
grudge me the four letters of so brief an adjective ? 

The long French and Italian forms of ceremony at 
the close of letters are felt to be burdensome in the 
present day, and are gradually giving place to briefer 
ones ; but it is the very length of them, and the time 
and trouble they cost to write, that make them so cour- 
teous, and no brief form can ever be an effective sub- 
stitute in that respect. 

I was once placed in the rather embarrassing posi- 
tion of having suddenly to send telegrams in my own 



326 EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 

name, containing a request, to two high foreign author- 
ities in a corps where punctilious ceremonj^ is very 
strictly observed. My solution of the difficulty was 
to write two full ceremonious letters, with all the formal 
expressions unabridged, and then have these letters 
telegraphed in extenso. This was the only possible 
solution, as an ordinaiy telegram would have been en- 
tirely out of the question. It being rather expensive 
to telegraph a very formal letter, the cost added to the 
appearance of deference, so I had the curious but very 
real advantage on my side that I made a telegram seem 
even more deferential than a letter. 

The convenience of the letter-writer is consulted in 
inverse ratio to the appearances of courtesj'. In the 
matter of sealing, for example, that seems so slight 
and indifferent a concern, a question of ceremony and 
courtesy is involved. The old-fashioned custom of a 
large seal with the sender's arms or cipher added to 
the importance of the contents both by strictly guard- 
ing the privacy of the communication and by the digni- 
fied assertion of the writer's rank. Besides this, the 
time that it costs to take a proper impression of a seal 
shows the absence of hurry and the disposition to sacri- 
fice which are a part of all noble courtes}^ ; whilst 
the act of rapidly licking the gum on the inside of an 
envelope and then giving it a thump with your fist to 
make it stick is neither dignified nor elegant. There 
were certain beautiful associations with the act of seal- 
ing. There was the taper that had to be lighted, and 
that had its own little candlestick of chased or gilded 
silver, or delicately painted porcelain ; there was the 



EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 327 

polished and graven stone of the seal, itself more or 
less precious, and enhanced in value by an art of high 
antiquity and noble associations, and this graven sig- 
net-stone was set in massive gold. The act of sealing 
was deliberate, to secure a fair impression, and as the 
wax caught flame and melted it disengaged a delicate 
perfume. These little things may be laughed at by a 
generation of practical men of business who know the 
value of every second, but they had their importance, 
and have it still, amongst those who possess any deli- 
cacy of perception. 1 The reader will remember the 
sealing of Nelson's letter to the Crown Prince of Den- 
mark during the battle of Copenhagen. "A wafer 
was given him," says Southey, " but he ordered a can- 
dle to be brought from the cockpit, and sealed the let- 
ter with wax, affixing a larger seal than he ordinarily 
used. ' This,' said he, 'is no time to appear hurried 
and informal.' " The story is usually told as a strik- 
ing example of Nelson's coolness in a time of intense 

1 Sir Walter Scott had sympathy enough with the courtesy of 
old time to note its minutiae very closely : — 

"After inspecting the cavalry, Sir Everard again conducted his 
nephew to the library, where he produced a letter, carefully folded, 
surrounded by a little stripe of fox-silk, according to ancient form, 
and sealed with an accurate impression of the Waverley coat-of-arms. 
It was addressed, with great formality, ' To Cosmo Comyne Bradwar- 
dine, Esq., of Bradwardine, at his principal mansion of Tully-Veolan, 
in Perthshire, North Britain. These — by the hands of Captain Edward 
Waverley, nephew of Sir Everard Waverley, of Waverley-Honour, 
Bart." — Waverley, chap. vi. 

I had not this passage in mind when writing the text of this 
Essay, but the reader will notice how closely it confirms what I 
have said about deliberation and care to secure a fair impression 
of the seal. 



328 EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 

excitement, but it might be told with equal effect as a 
proof of his knowledge of mankind and of the trifles 
which have a powerful effect on human intercourse. 
The preference of wax to a wafer, and especially the 
deliberate choice of a larger seal as more ceremonious 
and important, are clear evidence of diplomatic skill. 
No doubt, too, the impression of Nelson's arms was 
very careful and clear. 

In writing to French Ministers of State it is a tradi- 
tional custom to employ a certain paper called ' ' papier 
ministre," which is very much larger than that sent 
to ordinary mortals. Paper is by no means a matter 
of indifference. It is the material costume under 
which we present ourselves to persons removed from 
us by distance ; and as a man pays a call in handsome 
clothes as a sign of respect to others, and also of self- 
respect, so he sends a piece of handsome paper to be 
the bearer of his salutation. Besides, a letter is in 
itself a gift, though a small one, and however trifling 
a gift may be it must never be shabby. The English 
understand this art of choosing good-looking letter- 
paper, and are remarkable for using it of a thickness 
rare in other nations. French love of elegance has led 
to charming inventions of tint and texture, particularly 
in delicate gray tints, and these papers are now often 
decorated with embossed initials of heraldic devices on 
a large scale, but that is carrying prettiness too far. 
The common American habit of writing letters on ruled 
paper is not to be recommended, as the ruling reminds 
us of copy-books and account-books, and has a me- 
chanical appearance that greatly detracts from what 
ought to be the purely personal air of an autograph. 



EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 329 

Modern love of despatch has led to the invention of 
the post-card, which, from our present point of view, 
that of courtesy, deserves unhesitating condemnation. 
To use a post-card is as much as to say to your corre- 
spondent, "In order to save for myself a very little 
money and a very little time, I will expose the subject 
of our correspondence to the eyes of any clerk, post- 
man, or servant, who feels the slightest curiosity about 
it ; and I take this small piece of card, of which I am 
allowed to use one side only, in order to relieve myself 
from the obligation, and spare myself the trouble, of 
writing a letter." To make the convenience absolutelj- 
perfect, it is customary in England to omit the opening 
and concluding salutations on post-cards, so that thej- 
are the ne plus ultra, I will not saj T of positive rudeness, 
but of that negative rudeness which is not exactly the 
opposite of courtesy, but its absence. Here again, how- 
ever, comes the modern principle ; and promptitude and 
frequency of communication may be accepted as a com- 
pensation for the sacrifice of formality. It may be 
argued, and with reason, that when a man of our own 
day sends a post-card his ancestors would have been 
still more laconic, for the}' would have sent nothing at 
all, and that there are a thousand circumstances in 
which a post-card may be written when it is not possible 
to write a letter. A husband on his travels has a supply 
of such cards in a pocket-book. With these, and his 
pencil, he writes a line once or twice a da} T in train 
or steamboat, or at table between two dishes, or on 
the wind}^ platform of a railway station, or in the 
street when he sees a letter-box. ITo so.nds fifty such 



330 EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 

communications where his father would have written 
three letters, and his grandfather one slowly composed 
and slowly travelling epistle. 

Many modern correspondents appreciate the con- 
venience of the post-card, but their conscience, as that 
of well-bred people, cannot get over the fault of its pub- 
licity. For these the stationers have devised several 
different substitutes. There is the French plan of what 
is called " Un Mot a la Poste," a piece of paper with a 
single fold, gummed round the other three edges, and 
perforated like postage-stamps for the facility of the 
opener. 1 There is the miniature sheet of paper that 
3 t ou have not to fold, and there is the card that you 
enclose in an envelope, and that prepares the reader for 
a very brief communication. Here, again, is a very 
curious illustration of the sacrificial nature of courtes} 7 . 
A card is sent ; why a card ? Why not a piece of paper 
of the same size which would hold as many words? 
The answer is that a card is handsomer and more costly, 
and from its stiffness a little easier to take out of the 
envelope, and pleasanter to hold whilst reading, so that 
a small sacrifice is made to the pleasure and convenience 
of the receiver, which is the essence of courtesy in letter- 
writing. All this brief correspondence is the offspring 

1 A very odd but very real objection to the employment of 
these missives is that the receiver does not always know how to 
open them, and may burn them unread. I remember sending a 
short letter in this shape from France to an English lady. She 
destroyed my letter without opening it ; and I got for answer that 
"if it was a French custom to send blank post-cards she did not 
know what could be the signification of it." Such was the result 
of a well-meant attempt to avoid the non-courteous post-card ! 



EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 331 

of the electric telegraph. Our forefathers were not used 
to it, and would have regarded it as an offence. Even 
at the present date (1884) it is not quite safe to write in 
our brief modern way to persons who came to maturity 
before the electric telegraph was in use. 

There is a wide distinction between brevity and hurry ; 
iu fact, brevity, if of the intelligent kind, is the best pre- 
servative against hurcy. Some men write short letters, 
but are very careful to observe all the forms ; and they 
have the great advantage that the apparent importance 
of the formal expressions is enhanced bj the shortness 
of the letter itself. This is the case in Robert Warcopp's 
letter to Sir Robert Plumpton. 

When hurry really exists, and it is impossible to avoid 
the appearance of it, as when a letter cannot be brief, 
yet must be written at utmost speed, the proper course 
is to apologize for hurry at the beginning and not at the 
end of the letter. The reader is then propitiated at 
once, and excuses the slovenly penmanship and style. 

It is remarkable that legibility of handwriting should 
never have been considered as among the essentials of 
courtesy in correspondence. It is obviously for the 
convenience of the reader that a letter should be easily 
read ; but here another consideration intervenes. To 
write very legibly is the accomplishment of clerks and 
writing-masters, who are usually poor men, and, as such, 
do not hold a high social position. Aristocratic pride 
has always had it for a principle to disdain, for itself, 
the accomplishments of professional men ; and therefore 
a careless scrawl is more aristocratic than a clean hand- 
writing, if the scrawl is of a fashionable kind. Perhaps 



332 EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 

the historic origin of this feeling may be the scorn of 
the ignorant mediaeval baron for writing of all kinds as 
beneath the attention of a warrior. In a cultured age 
there may be a reason of a higher order. It may be 
supposed that attention to mechanical excellence is in- 
compatible with the action of the intellect ; and people 
are curiously ready to imagine incompatibilities where 
they do not really exist. As a matter of fact, some men 
of eminent intellectual gifts write with as exquisite a 
clearness in the formation of their letters as in the eluci- 
dation of their ideas. It is easily forgotten, too, that 
the same person may use different kinds of handwriting, 
according to circumstances, like the gentleman whose 
best hand some people could read, whose middling hand 
the writer himself could read, and whose worst neither 
he nor any other human being could decipher. Le- 
gouve, in his exquisite wa} 7 , tells a charming story of 
how he astonished a little girl 03- excelling her in callig- 
raph} 7 . His scribble is all but illegible, and she was 
laughing at it one da} T , when he boldly challenged her to 
a trial. Both sat down and formed their letters with 
great patience, as in a writing class, and it turned out, 
to the girl's amazement, that the scribbling Academician 
had by far the more copperplate-like hand of the two. 
He then explained that his bad writing was simply the 
result of speed. Frenchmen provokingly reserve their 
very worst and most illegible writing for the signature. 
You are able to read the letter but not the signature, 
and if there is not some other means of ascertaining 
the writer's name you are utterly at fault. 

The old habit of crossing letters, now happily aban* 



EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 333 

doned, was a direct breach of real, though not of what 
in former days were conventional, good manners. To 
cross a letter is as much as to say, ' ' In order to spare 
myself the cost of another sheet of paper or an extra 
stamp, I am quite willing to inflict upon } t ou, my reader, 
the trouble of disengaging one set of lines from an- 
other." Very economical people in the past generation 
saved an occasional penny in another way at the cost of 
the reader's eyes. They diluted their ink with water, 
till the recipient of the letter cried, "Prithee, why so 
pale?" 

The modern type- writing machine has the advantage 
of making all words equally legible ; but the receiver of 
the printed letter is likely to feel on opening it a slight 
yet perceptible shock of the kind always caused by a 
want of consideration. The letter so printed is un- 
doubtedly easier to read than all but the very clearest 
manuscript, and so far it may be considered a politeness 
to use the instrument ; but unluckily it is impersonal, 
so that the performer on the instrument seems far re- 
moved from the receiver of the letter and not in that 
direct communication with him which would be appar- 
ent in an autograph. The effect on the mind is almost 
like that of a printed circular, or at least of a letter 
which has been dictated to a short-hand writer. 

The dictation of letters is allowable in business, 
because men of business have to use the utmost attain- 
able despatch, and (like the use of the lead pencil) it is 
permitted to invalids, but with these exceptions it is 
sure to produce a feeling of distance almost resembling 
discourtes}'. In the first place, a dictated letter is not 



334 EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 

strictly private, its contents being already known to 
the amanuensis ; and besides this it is felt that the rea- 
son for dictating letters is the composer's convenience, 
which he ought not to consult so obviously. If he 
dictates to a short-hand writer he is evidently chary of 
his valuable time, whereas courtesy always at least 
seems willing to sacrifice time to others. These re- 
marks, I repeat, have no reference to business corre- 
spondence, which has its own code of good manners. 

The most irritating letters to receive are those which, 
under a great show of courtesy, with many phrases and 
man}' kind inquiries about your health and that of your 
household, and even with some news adapted to your 
taste, contain some short sentence which betrays the 
fact that the whole letter was written with a manifestly 
selfish purpose. The proper answer to such letters is a 
brief business answer to the one essential sentence that 
revealed the writer's object, not taking any notice what- 
ever of the froth of courteous verbiage. 

Is it a part of necessaiy good breeding to answer 
letters at all? Are we really, in the nature of things, 
under the obligation to take a piece of paper and write 
phrases and sentences thereupon because it has pleased 
somebody at a distance to spend his time in that 
manner? 

This requires consideration ; there can be no general 
rule. It seems to me that people commit the error of 
transferring the subject from the region of oral conver- 
sation to the region of written intercourse. If a man 
asked me the way in the street it would be rudeness on 
my part not to answer him, because the answer is easily 



EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION. 335 

given and costs no appreciable time, but in written 
correspondence the case is essentially different. I am 
burdened with work ; every hour, every minute of my 
daj T is apportioned to some definite duty or necessary 
rest, and three strangers make use of the post to ask me 
questions. To answer them I must make references ; 
however brief the letters ma} T be they will take time, — 
altogether the three will consume an hour. Have these 
correspondents any right to expect me to work an hour 
for them? Would a cabman drive them about the 
streets of London during an hour for nothing? Would 
a waterman pull them an hour on the Thames for 
nothing? Would a shoe-black brush their boots and 
trousers an hour for nothing? And why am I to serve 
these men gratuitous!}' and be called an ill-bred, dis- 
courteous person if I tacitly decline to be their servant ? 
We owe sacrifices — occasional sacrifices — of this kind 
to friends aud relations, and we can afford them to a 
few, but we are under no obligation to answer every- 
body. Those whom we do answer may be thankful for 
a word on a post-card in Gladstone's brief but sufficient 
fashion. I am very much of the opinion of Rudolphe 
in Ponsard's " L'Honneur et 1' Argent." A friend asks 
him what he does about letters : — 

Rudolphe. Je les mets 

Soigneusement en poche et ne reponds jamais. 

Premier Ami. Oh ! vous raillez. 

Rudolphe. Non pas. Je ne puis pas admettre 
Qu'un importun m'oblige a repondre a sa lettre, 
Et, parcequ'il lui plait de noircir du papier 
Me condamne moi-meme a ce facheux metier. 



336 LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 



ESSAY XXIII. 

LETTERS OE FRIENDSHIP. 

TF the art of writing had been unknown till now, and 
■*• if the invention of it were suddenly to burst upon 
the world as did that of the telephone, one of the things 
most generally said in praise of it would be this. It 
would be said, " What a gain to friendship, now that 
friends can communicate in spite of separation by the 
very widest distances ! " 

Yet we have possessed this means of communication, 
the fullest and best of all, from remote antiquity, and we 
scarcely make any use of it — certainly not any use at 
all responding to its capabilities, and as time goes on, 
instead of developing those capabilities by practice in 
the art of friendly correspondence, we allow them to 
diminish b} T disuse. 

The lowering of cost for the transport of letters, in- 
stead of making friendly correspondents numerous, has 
made them few. The cheap postage-stamp has in- 
creased business correspondence prodigiously, but it 
has had a very different effect on that of friendship. 
Great numbers of men whose business correspondence 
is heavy scarcely write letters of friendship at all. 
Their minds produce the business letter as by a second 
nature, and are otherwise sterile. 

As for the facilities afforded by steam communication 



LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 337 

with distant countries, they seem to be of little use 
to friendship, since a moderate distance soon puts a 
stop to friendly communication. Except in cases of 
strong affection the Straits of Dover are an effectual 
though imaginary bar to intercourse of this kind, not to 
speak of the great oceans. 

The impediment created by a narrow sea is, as I 
have said, imaginary, but we may speculate on the 
reasons for it ; and my own reflections have ended in 
the somewhat strange conclusion that it must have 
something to do with sea-sickness. It must be that 
people dislike the idea of writing a letter that will have 
to cross a narrow channel of salt-water, because they 
vaguely and dimly dread the motion of the vessel. 
Nobody would consciously avow to himself such a 
sympathy with a missive exempt from all human ills, 
but the feeling may be unconsciously present. How 
else are we to account for the remarkable fact that salt- 
water breaks friendly communication by letter? If you 
go to live anywhere out of your native island your most 
intimate friends cease to give any news of themselves. 
The}' do not even send printed announcements of the 
marriages and deaths in their families. This does not 
imply any cessation of friendly feeling on their part. 
If j'ou appeared in England again they would welcome 
you with the utmost kindness and hospitality, but they 
do not like to post anything that will have to cross the 
sea. The news-vendors have not the same delicate 
imaginative sympathy with the possible sufferings of 
rag-pulp, so } T ou get } 7 our English journals and find 
therein, by pure accident, the marriage of one intimate 

22 



338 LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 

old friend and the death of another. You excuse the 
married man, because he is too much intoxicated with 
happiness to be responsible for any omission ; and you 
excuse the dead man, because he cannot send letters 
from another world. Still you think that somebody 
not preoccupied hy bridal joys or impeded by the last 
paralysis might have sent you a line directly, were it 
only a printed card. 

Not only do the writers of letters feel a difficulty in 
sending their manuscript across the sea, but people 
appear to have a sense of difficulty in correspondence 
proportionate to the distance the letter will have to 
traverse. One would infer that they really experience, 
b} r the power of imagination, a feeling of fatigue in 
sending a letter on a long journe}'. If this is not so, 
how are we to account for the fact that the rarity of 
letters from friends increases in exact proportion to 
our remoteness from them ? A simple person without 
correspondence would naturally imagine that it would 
be resorted to as a solace for separation, and that the 
greater the distance the more the separated friends 
would desire to be drawn together occasionally by its 
means, but in practice this rarely happens. People 
will communicate bj T letter across a space of a hundred 
miles when they will not across a thousand. 

The very smallest impediments are of importance 
when the desire for intercourse is languid. The cost 
of postage to colonies and to countries within the pos- 
tal union is trifling, but still it is heavier than the cost 
of internal postage, and it may be unconsciously felt 
as an impediment. Another slight impediment is that 



LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 339 

the answer to a letter sent to a great distance cannot 
arrive next day, so that he who writes in hope of an 
answer is like a trader who cannot expect an immedi- 
ate return for an investment. 

To prevent friendships from dying out entirely 
through distance, the French have a custom which 
seems, but is not, an empty form. On or about New 
Year's Day they send cards to all friends and many 
acquaintances, however far away. The useful effects 
of this custom are the following : — 

1. It acquaints you with the fact that j^our friend is 
still alive, — pleasing information if you care to see 
him again. 

2. It shows you that he has not forgotten you, 

3. It gives 3 7 ou his present address. 

4. In case of marriage, jow receive his wife's card 
along with his own ; and if he is dead you receive no 
card at all, which is at least a negative intimation. 1 

This custom has also an effect upon written corre- 
spondence, as the printed card affords the opportunity 
of writing a letter, when, without the address, the let- 
ter might not be written. When the address is well 
known the card often suggests the idea of writing. 

When warm friends send visiting-cards they often 
add a few words of manuscript on the card itself, ex- 
pressing friendly sentiments and giving a scrap of brief 
but welcome news. 

Here is a suggestion to a generation that thinks 
friendly letter-writing irksome. With a view to the 

1 Besides which, in the case of a French friend, you are sure to 
have notice of such events by printed lettres defaire part. 



340 LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 

sparing of time and trouble, which is the great object 
of modern life (sparing, that is, in order to waste in 
other ways), cards might be printed as forms of invita- 
tion are, leaving only a few blanks to be filled up ; or 
there might be a public signal-book in which the phrases 
most likely to be useful might be represented by num- 
bers. 

The abandonment of letter-writing between friends 
is the more to be regretted that, unless our friends are 
public persons, we receive no news of them indirectly ; 
therefore, when we leave their neighborhood, the sepa- 
ration is of that complete kind which resembles tempo- 
rary death. a No word comes from the dead," and no 
word comes from those silent friends. It is a melan- 
choly thought in leaving a Mend of this kind, when you 
shake hands at the station and still hear the sound of 
his voice, that in a few minutes he will be dead to you 
for months or years. The separation from a corre- 
sponding friend is shorn of half its sorrows. You 
know that he will write, and when he writes it requires 
little imagination to hear his voice again. 

To write, however, is not all. For correspondence 
to reach its highest value, both friends must have the 
natural gift of friendly letter-writing, which may be 
defined as the power of talking on paper in such a 
manner as to represent their own minds with perfect 
fidelity in their friendly aspect. 

This power is not common. A man may be a charm- 
ing companion, full of humor and gayet} 7 , a well of 
knowledge, an excellent talker, yet his correspondence 
may not reveal the possession of these gifts. Some 



LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 341 

men are so constituted that as soon as thej^ take a pen 
their faculties freeze. I remember a case of the same 
congelation in another art. A certain painter had 
exuberant humor and mimicry, with a marked talent 
for strong effects in talk ; in short, he had the gifts of 
an actor, and, as Pius VII. called Napoleon I., he was 
both commediante and tragediante. Any one who 
knew him, and did not know his paintings, would 
have supposed at once that a man so gifted must have 
painted the most animated works ; but it so happened 
(from some cause in the deepest mysteries of his na- 
ture) that whenever he took up a brush or a pencil his 
humor, his tragic power, and his love of telling effects 
all suddenly left him, and he was as timid, slow, sober, 
and generally ineffectual in his painting as he was full of 
fire and energy in talk. So it is in writing. That 
which ought to be the pouring forth of a man's nature 
often liberates only a part of his nature, and perhaps 
that part which has least to do with friendship. Your 
friend delights you by his ease and affectionate charm 
of manner, by the happiness of his expressions, by his 
wit, by the extent of his information, all these being 
qualities that social intercourse brings out in him as 
colors are revealed by light. The same man, in dull 
solitude at his desk, may write a letter from which 
every one of these qualities may be totally absent, and 
instead of them he may offer you a piece of perfunctory 
duty- writing which, as you see quite plainly, he onty 
wanted to get done with, and in which you do not find 
a trace of your friend's real character. Such corre- 
spondence as that is worth having only so far as 



342 LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 

it informs you of your friend's existence and of his 
health. 

Another and a very different way in which a man 
may represent himself unfairly in correspondence, so 
that his letters are not his real self, is when he finds 
that he has some particular talent as a writer, and un- 
consciously cultivates that talent when he holds a pen, 
whereas his real self has many other qualities that re- 
main unrepresented. In this way humor may become 
the dominant quality in the letters of a correspondent 
whose conversation is not dominantly humorous. 

Habits of business sometimes produce the effect that 
the confirmed business correspondent will write to his 
friend willingly and promptly on any matter of busi- 
ness, and will give him excellent advice, and be glad 
of the opportunity of rendering him a service, but he 
will shrink from the unaccustomed effort of writing any 
other kind of letter. 

There is a strong temptation to blame silent friends 
and praise good correspondents ; but we do not reflect 
that letter- writing is a task to some and a pleasure to 
others, and that if people may sometimes be justly 
blamed for shirking a corvee they can never deserve 
praise for indulging in an amusement. There is a par- 
ticular reason why, when friendly letter- writing is a 
task, it is more willingly put off than many other tasks 
that appear far heavier and harder. It is either a real 
pleasure or a feigned pleasure, and feigned pleasures 
are the most wearisome things in life, far more weari- 
some than acknowledged work. For in work you have 
a plain thing to do and you see the end of it, and there 



LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 343 

is no need for ambages at the beginning or for a graceful 
retiring at the close ; but a feigned pleasure has its 
own observances that must be gone through whether one 
has any heart for them or not. The groom who cleans 
a rich man's stable, and whistles at his work, is happier 
than the guest at a state dinner who is trying to look 
other than what he is, — a wearied victim of feigned and 
formal pleasure with a set false smile upon his face. 
In writing a business letter you have nothing to affect ; 
but a letter of friendship, unless you have the real in- 
spiration for it, is a narrative of things you have no 
true impulse to narrate, and the expression of feelings 
which (even if they be in some degree existent) you 
do not earnestly desire to utter. 

The sentiment of friendship is in general rather a 
quiet feeling of regard than any lively enthusiasm. It 
may be counted upon for what it is, — a disposition to 
receive the friend with a welcome or to render him an 
occasional service, but there is not, commonly, enough 
of it to be a perennial warm fountain of literary inspira- 
tion. Therefore the worst mistake in dealing with a 
friend is to reproach him for not having been cordial 
and communicative enough. Sometimes this reproach 
is made, especially by women, and the immediate effect 
of it is to close whatever communicativeness there may 
be. If the friend wrote little before being reproached 
he will write less after. 

The true inspiration of the friendly letter is the per- 
fect faith that all the concerns of the writer will interest 
his friend. If James, who is separated by distance from 
John, thinks that John will not care about what James 



344 LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 

has been doing, hoping, suffering, the fount of friendly 
correspondence is frozen at its source. James ought to 
believe that John loves him enough to care about every 
little thing that can affect his happiness, even to the 
sickness of his old horse or the accident that happened 
to his dog when the scullery-maid threw scalding water 
out of the kitchen window ; then there will be no lack, 
and James will babble on innocently through many a 
page, and never have to think. 

The believer in friendship, he who has the true un- 
doubting faith, writes with perfect carelessness about 
great things and small, avoiding neither serious interests, 
as a wary man would, nor trivial ones that might be 
passed over by a writer avaricious of his time. William 
of Orange, in his letters to Bentinck, appears to have 
been the model of friendly correspondents ; and he was 
so because his letters reflected not a part only of his 
thinking and living, but the whole of it, as if nothing 
that concerned him could possibly be without interest 
for the man he loved. Familiar as it must be to many 
readers, I cannot but quote a passage from Macaulay : 

" The descendants of Bentinck still preserve many letters 
written by William to their master, and it is not too much to 
say that no person who has not studied those letters can form 
a correct notion of the Prince's character. He whom even 
his admirers generally accounted the most frigid and distant 
of men here forgets all distinctions of rank, and pours out 
all his thoughts with the ingenuousness of a schoolboy. He 
imparts without reserve secrets of the highest moment. He 
explains with perfect simplicity vast designs affecting all 
the governments of Europe. Mingled with his communica- 
tions on such subjects are other communications of a very 






LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 345 

different but perhaps not of a less interesting kind. All his 
adventures, all his personal feelings, his long runs after enor- 
mous stags, his carousals on St. Hubert's Day, the growth of 
his plantations, the failure of his melons, the state of his 
stud, his wish to procure an easy pad-nag for his wife, his 
vexation at learning that one of his household, after ruining 
a girl of good family, refused to marry her, his fits of sea- 
sickness, his coughs, his headaches, his devotional moods, his 
gratitude for the Divine protection after a great escape, his 
struggles to submit himself to the Divine will after a disaster, 
are described with an amiable garrulity hardly to have been 
expected from the most discreetly sedate statesman of his 
age. Still more remarkable is the careless effusion of his 
tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes in 
his friend's domestic felicity." 

Friendly letters easily run over from sheet to sheet 
till they become ample and voluminous. I received a 
welcome epistle of twenty pages recently, and have 
seen another from a young man to his comrade which 
exceeded Mij ; but the grandest letter that I ever heard 
of was from Gustave Dore to a ver}^ old lady whom he 
liked. He was travelling in Switzerland, and sent her 
a letter eighty pages long, full of lively pen-sketches 
for her entertainment. Artists often insert sketches in 
their letters, — a graceful habit, as it adds to their inter- 
est and value. 

The talent for scribbling friendly letters implies some 
rough literary power, but may coexist with other literary 
powers of a totally different kind, and, as it seems, in 
perfect independence of them. There is no apparent 
connection between the genius in " Childe Harold," 
" Manfred," " Cain," and the talent of a lively letter- writer, 
yet Byron was the best careless letter-writer in English 



346 LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 

whose correspondence has been published and pre- 
served. He said "dreadful is the exertion of letter- 
writing," but by this he must have meant the first 
overcoming of indolence to begin the letter, for when 
once in motion his pen travelled with consummate 
naturalness and ease, and the exertion is not to be 
perceived. The length and subject of his communica- 
tions were indeterminate. He scribbled on and on, 
ever}?- passing mood being reflected and fixed forever 
in his letters, which complete our knowledge of him by 
showing us the action of his mind in ordinal times as 
vividly as the poems display its power in moments of 
highest exaltation. We follow his mental phases from 
minute to minute. He is not really in one state and 
pretending to be in another for form's sake, so you 
have all his moods, and the letters are alive. The 
transitions are quick as thought. He darts from one 
topic to another with the freedom and agility of a bird, 
dwelling on each just long enough to satisfy his present 
need, but not an instant longer, and this without any 
reference to the original subject or motive of the letter. 
He is one of those perfect correspondents qui causent 
avec la plume. Men, women, and things, comic and 
tragic adventures, magnificent scenery, historical cities, 
all that his mind spontaneously notices in the world, 
are touched upon briefly, yet with consummate power. 
Though the sentences were written in the most careless 
haste and often in the strangest situations, many a 
paragraph is so dense in its substance, so full of matter, 
that one could not abridge it without loss. But the 
supreme merit of Byron's letters is that they record 



LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 347 

his own sensations with such fidelity. What do I, the 
receiver of a letter, care for second-hand opinions about 
anything? I can hear the fashionable opinions from 
echoes innumerable. What I do want is a bit of my 
friend himself, of his own peculiar idiosj^ncrasy, and if 
I get that it matters nothing that his feelings and opin- 
ions should be different from mine ; na} 7 , the more they 
differ from mine the more freshness and amusement 
they bring me. All Byron's correspondents might be 
sure of getting a bit of the real Byron. He never 
describes anything without conveying the exact effect 
upon himself. Writing to his publisher from Rome in 
1817, he gives in a single paragraph a powerful descrip- 
tion of the execution of three robbers by the guillotine 
(rather too terrible to quote) , and at the end of it comes 
the personal effect : — 

" The pain seems little, and yet the effect to the spectator 
and the preparation to the criminal are very striking and 
chilling. The first turned me quite hot and thirsty, and 
made me shake so that I could hardly hold the opera-glass 
(I was close, but was determined to see as one should see 
everything once, with attention) ; the second and third (which 
shows how dreadfully soon things grow indifferent), I am 
ashamed to say, had no effect on me as a horror, though I 
would have saved them if I could." 

How accurately this experience is described with no 
affectation of impassible courage (he trembles at first 
like a woman) or of becoming emotion afterwards, the 
instant that the real emotion ceased ! Only some pity 
remains, — "I would have saved them if I could." 

The bits of frank criticism thrown into his letters, 
often quite by chance, were not the least interesting 



348 LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 

elements in Byron's correspondence. Here is an ex- 
ample, about a book that had been sent him : — 

" Modern Greece — good for nothing; written by some one 
who has never been there, and, not being able to manage the 
Spenser stanza, has invented a thing of his own, consisting 
of two elegiac stanzas, an heroic line and an Alexandrine, 
twisted on a string. Besides, why modern ? You may say 
modern Greeks, but surely Greece itself is rather more ancient 
than ever it was." 

The carelessness of B} T ron in letter- writing, his total 
indifference to proportion and form, his inattention to 
the beginning, middle, and end of a letter, considered 
as a literary composition, are not to be counted for 
faults, as they would be in writings of any pretension. 
A friendly letter is, by its nature, a thing without pre- 
tension. The one merit of it which compensates for 
every defect is to carry the living writer into the reader's 
presence, such as he really is, not such as by study and 
art he might make himself out to be. Byron was 
energetic, impetuous, impulsive, quickly observant, dis- 
orderly, generous, open-hearted, vain. All these quali- 
ties and defects are as conspicuous in his correspondence 
as they were in his mode of life. There have been better 
letter- writers as to literary art, — to which he gave no 
thought, — and the literary merits that his letters possess 
(their clearness, their force of narrative and description, 
their conciseness) are not the results of study, but the 
characteristics of a vigorous mind. 

The absolutely best friendly letter-writer known to 
me is Victor Jacquemont. He, too, wrote according to 
the inspiration of the moment, but it was so abundant 



LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 349 

that it carried him on like a steadily flowing tide. His 
letters are wonderfully sustained, yet they are not com- 
posed ; the} 7 are as artless as Byron's, but much more 
full and regular. Many scribblers have facility, a flux 
of words, but who has Jacquemont's weight of matter 
along with it? The development of his extraordinary 
epistolary talent was due to another talent deprived of 
adequate exercise by circumstances. Jacquemont was 
by nature a brilliant, charming, amiable talker, and the 
circumstances were various situations in which this 
talker was deprived of an audience, being often, in 
long wanderings, surrounded by dull or ignorant people. 
Ideas accumulated in his mind till the accumulation be- 
came difficult to bear, and he relieved himself by talking 
on paper to friends at a distance, but intentionally only 
to one friend at a time. He tried to forget that his 
letters were passed round a circle of readers, and the 
idea that they would be printed never once occurred to 
him: — 

"En e*crivant aujourd'hui aux uns et aux autres, j'ai 
cherche a oublier ce que tu me dis de l'echange que chacun 
fait des lettres qu'il rec^oit de moi. Cette pensee m'aurait 
retenu la plume, ou du moins, ne Vaurait pas laissee couler 
assez nonchalamment sur le papier pour en noircir, en un jour, 
cinguante-huit feuilles, comme je l'ai fait. . . . Je sais et 
j'aime beaucoup causer a deux ; a trois, c'est autre chose; il en 
est de meme pour ecrire. Pour parler comme je pense et sans 
blague, il me faut la persuasion que je ne serai lu que de celui 
a qui j'' ecrisP 

To read these letters, in the four volumes of them 
which have been happily preserved, is to live with the 
courageous observer from day to da}', to share pleasures 



350 LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 

enjoyed with the freshness of sensation that belongs to 
youth and strength, and privations borne with the cheer- 
fulness of a truly heroic spirit. 

This Essay would run to an inordinate length if I even 
mentioned the best of the many letter-writers who are 
known to us ; and it is generally by some adventitious 
circumstance that they have ever been known at all. 
A man wins fame in something quite outside of letter- 
writing, and then his letters are collected and given to 
the world, but perfectly obscure people maj' have been 
equal or superior to him as correspondents. Occasion- 
ally the letters of some obscure person are rescued from 
oblivion. Madame de Remusat passed quietly through 
life, and is now in a blaze of posthumous fame. Her 
son decided upon the publication of her letters, and then 
it became at once apparent that this lady had extraor- 
dinaiy gifts of the observing and recording order, so 
that her testimony, as an ej^e-witness of rare intelligence, 
must affect all future estimates of the conqueror of 
Austerlitz. There may be at this moment, there prob- 
ably are, persons to whom the world attributes no liter- 
ary talent, yet who are cleverly preserving the ve^ best 
materials of history in careless letters to their friends. 

It seems an indiscretion to read private letters, even 
when they are in print, but it is an indiscretion we can- 
not help committing. What can be more private than 
a letter from a man to his wife on purely family matters ? 
Surely it is wrong to read such letters ; but who could 
repent having read that exquisite one from Tasso's 
father, Bernardo Tasso, written to his wife about the 
education of their children during an involuntary sepa- 



LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 351 

ration? It shows to what a degree a sheet of paper 
may be made the vehicle of a tender affection. In the 
first page he tries, and, lover-like, tries again and again, 
to find words that will draw them together in spite of 
distance. " Not merely often," he says, " but con- 
tinually our thoughts must meet upon the road." He 
expresses the fullest confidence that her feelings for 
him are as strong and true as his own for her, and that 
the weariness of separation is painful alike for both, 
only he fears that she will be less able to bear the pain, 
not because she is wanting in prudence but by reason 
of her abounding love. At length the tender kindness 
of his expressions culminates in one passionate outburst, 
u poi ch' io amo voi in quello estremo grado che si 
possa amar cosa mortale." 

It would be difficult to find a stronger contrast than 
that between Bernardo Tasso's warmth and the tranquil 
coolness of Montaigne, who just says enough to save 
appearances in that one conjugal epistle of his which 
has come down to us. He begins by quoting a scepti- 
cal modern view of marriage, and then briefly disclaims 
it for himself, but does not say exactly what his own 
sentiments may be, not having much ardor of affec- 
tion to express, and honestly avoiding any feigned 
declarations : — 

11 Ma Femme vous entendez bien que ce n'est pas le tour 
d'vn galand homme, aux reigles de ce temps icy, de vous 
courtiser & caresser encore. Car ils disent qu'vn habil 
homme peut bien prendre femme: mais que de l'espouser 
c'est a faire a vn sot. Laissons les dire: ie me tiens de ma 
part a la simple facon du vieil aage, aussi en porte-ie tan tost 



352 LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 

le poil. Et de vray la nouuellete couste si cher iusqu'a ceste 
heure a ce pauure estat (& si ie ne S9ay si nous en sommes a 
la derniere enchere) qu'en tout & par tout i'en quitte le party. 
Viuons ma femme, vous & moy, a la vieille Francoise." 

If friendship is maintained by correspondence, it is 
also liable to be imperilled by it. Not unfrequently 
have men parted on the most amiable terms, looking 
forward to a happy meeting, and not foreseeing the evil 
effects of letters. Something will be written by one of 
them, not quite acceptable to the other, who will either 
remonstrate and cause a rupture in that way, or take 
his trouble silently and allow friendship to die miserably 
of her wound. Much experience is needed before we 
entirely realize the danger of friendly intercourse on 
paper. It is ten times more difficult to maintain a 
friendship by letter than by personal intercourse, not 
for the obvious reason that letter-writing requires an 
effort, but because as soon as there is the slightest 
divergence of views or difference in conduct, the ex- 
pression of it or the account of it in writing cannot be 
modified by kindness in the eye or gentleness in the 
tone of voice. My friend may say almost anything to 
me in his private room, because whatever passes his 
lips will come with tones that prove him to be still my 
friend ; but if he wrote down exactly the same words, 
and a postman handed me the written paper, they might 
seem hard, unkind, and even hostile. It is strange 
how slow we are to discover this in practice. We are 
accustomed to speak with great freedom to intimate 
friends, and it is only after painful mishaps that we 
completely realize the truth that it is perilous to permit 



LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 353 

ourselves the same liberty with the pen. As soon as 
we do realize it we see the extreme folly of those who 
timidly avoid the oral expression of friendly censure, 
and afterwards write it all out in black ink and send it 
in a missive to the victim when he has gone away. He 
receives the letter, feels it to be a cold cruelty, and 
takes refuge from the vexations of friendship in the 
toils of business, thanking Heaven that in the region 
of plain facts there is small place for sentiment. 



354 LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 



ESSAY XXIV. 

LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 

r I ^HE possibilities of intercourse by correspondence 

**- are usually underestimated. 
That there are great natural differences of talent for 
letter-writing is certainly true ; but it is equally true 
that there are great natural differences of talent for 
oral explanation, yet, although we constantly hear 
people say that this or that matter of business cannot 
be treated by correspondence, we never hear them say 
that it cannot be treated by personal interviews. The 
value of the personal interview is often as much over- 
estimated as that of letters is depreciated ; for if some 
men do best with the tongue, others are more effective 
with the pen. 

It is presumed that there is nothing in correspond- 
ence to set against the advantages of pouring forth 
many words without effort, and of carrying on an 
argument rapidly ; but the truth is, that correspond- 
ence has peculiar advantages of its own. A hearer 
seldom grasps another person's argument until it has 
been repeated several times, and if the argument is of 
a very complex nature the chances are that he will 
not carry away all its points even then. A letter is 
a document which a person of slow abilities can study 
at his leisure, until he has mastered it ; so that an 



LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 355 

elaborate piece of reasoning may be set forth in a 
letter with a fair chance that such a person will ulti- 
mately understand it. He will read the letter three 
or four times on the day of its arrival, then he will 
still feel that something ma}^ have escaped him, and 
he will read it again next day. He will keep it and 
refer to it afterwards to refresh his memory. He can 
do nothing of all this with what you say to him orally. 
His only resource in that case is to write down a memo- 
randum of the conversation on your departure, in which 
he will probably make serious omissions or mistakes. 
Your letter is a memorandum of a far more direct and 
authentic kind. 

Appointments are sometimes made in order to settle 
a matter of business by talking, and after the parties 
have met and talked for a long time one sajs to the 
other, "I will write to you in a day or two ; " and the 
other instantly agrees with the proposal, from a feeling 
that the matter can be settled more clearly by letter 
than by oral communication. 

In these cases it may happen that the talking has 
cleared the way for the letter, — that it has removed 
subjects of doubt, hesitation, or dispute, and left only 
a few points on which the parties are very nearly 
agreed. 

There are, however, other cases, which have some- 
times come under my own observation, in which men 
meet by appointment to settle a matter, and then seem 
afraid to cope with it, and talk about indifferent sub- 
jects with a half-conscious intention of postponing the 
difficult one till there is no longer time to deal with it 



356 LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 

on that day. They then say, when they separate, 
"We will settle that matter by correspondence," as 
if the}' could not have done so just as easily without 
giving themselves the trouble of meeting. In such 
cases as these the reason for avoiding the difficult sub- 
ject is either timidity or indolence. Either the parties 
do not like to face each other in an opposition that 
may become a verbal combat, or else they have not 
decision and industry enough to do a hard day's work 
together ; so the}' procrastinate, that they may spread 
the work over a larger space of time. 

The timidity that shrinks from a personal encounter 
is sometimes the cause of hostile letter-writing about 
matters of business even when personal interviews are 
most easy. There are instances of disputes by letter 
between people who live in the same town, in the same 
street, and even in the same house, and who might 
quarrel with their tongues if they were not afraid, but 
fear drives them to fight from a certain distance, as it 
requires less personal courage to fire a cannon at an 
enemy a league away than to face his naked sword. 

Timidity leads people to write letters and to avoid 
them. Some timorous people feel bolder with a pen ; 
others, on the contrary, are ' extremely afraid of com- 
mitting anything to paper, either because written words 
remain and may be referred to afterwards, or because 
they may be read by eyes they were never intended 
for, or else because the letter- writer feels doubtful 
about his own powers in composition, grammar, or 
spelling. 

Of these reasons against doing business by letter the 



LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 357 

second is really serious. You write about your most 
strictly private affairs, and unless the receiver of the 
letter is a rigidly careful and orderly person, it may 
be read by his clerks or servants. You may afterwards 
visit the recipient and find the letter lying about on a 
disorderly desk, or stuck on a hook suspended from a 
wall, or thrust into a lockless drawer ; and as the letter 
is no longer your property, and you have not the re- 
source of destroying it, you will keenly appreciate the 
wisdom of those who avoid letter-writing when they 
can. 

The other cause of timidity, the apprehension that 
some fault may be committed, some sin against liter- 
ary taste or grammatical rule, has a powerful effect as 
a deterrent from even necessary business correspond- 
ence. The fear which a half-educated person feels that 
he will commit faults causes a degree of hesitation 
which is enough of itself to produce them ; and besides 
this cause of error there is the want of practice, also 
caused by timidity, for persons who dread letter- writing 
practise it as little as possible. 

The awkwardness of uneducated letter-writers is a 
most serious cause of anxiety to people who are com- 
pelled to intrust the care of things to uneducated de- 
pendants at a distance. Such care-takers, instead of 
keeping you regularly informed of the state of affairs 
as an intelligent correspondent would, write rarely, 
and they have such difficulty in imagining the neces- 
sary ignorance of one who is not on the spot, that the 
information they give you is provokingly incomplete on 
some most important points. 



358 LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 

An uneducated agent will write to yow and tell you, 
for example, that damage has occurred to something 
of yours, say a house, a carriage, or a yacht, but he 
will not tell } t ou its exact nature or extent, and he will 
leave you in a state of anxious conjecture. If you 
question him by letter, he will probably miss what is 
most essential in your questions, so that you will have 
great difficulty in getting at the exact truth. After 
much trouble you will perhaps have to take the train 
and go to see the extent of damage for yourself, though 
it might have been described to you quite accurately 
in a short letter by an intelligent man of business. 

Nothing is more wonderful than the mistakes in fol- 
lowing written directions that can be committed by 
uneducated men. With clear directions in the most 
legible characters before their eyes they will quietly go 
and do something entirely different, and appear un- 
feignedly surprised when you show them the written 
directions afterwards. In these cases it is probable 
that they have unconsciously substituted a notion of 
their own for }^our idea, which is the common process 
of what the uneducated consider to be understanding 
things. 

The extreme facility with which this is done may be 
illustrated by an example. The well-known French 
savant and inventor, Ruolz, whose name is famous in 
connection with electro-plating, turned his attention to 
paper for roofing and, as he perceived the defects of 
the common bituminous papers, invented another in 
which no bitumen was employed. This he advertised 
constantly and extensively as the ' ' Carton non bitume 



LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 359 

Ruolz," consequently every one calls it the " Carton 
bitume Ruolz.'' The reason here is that the notion of 
papers for roofs was already so associated in the French 
mind with bitumen, that it was absolutely impossible 
to effect the disjunction of the two ideas. 

Instances have occurred to eveiybody in which the 
consequence of warning a workman that he is not to 
do some particular thing, is that he goes and does it, 
when if nothing had been said on the subject he might, 
perchance, have avoided it. Here are two good in- 
stances of this, but I have met with many others. I 
remember ordering a binder to bind some volumes with 
red edges, specially stipulating that he was not to use 
aniline red. He therefore carefully stained the edges 
with aniline. I also remember writing to a painter that 
he was to stain some new fittings of a boat with a trans- 
parent glaze of raw sienna, and afterwards varnish 
them, and that he was to be careful not to use opaque 
paint an} T where. I was at a great distance from the 
boat and could not superintend the work. In due time 
I visited the boat and discovered that a foul tint of 
opaque paint had been employed everywhere on the 
new fittings, without any glaze or varnish whatever, 
in spite of the fact that old fittings, partially retained, 
were still there, with mellow transparent stain and var- 
nish, in the closest juxtaposition with the hideous thick 
new daubing. 

It is the evil of mediocrity in fortune to have fre- 
quently to trust to uneducated agents. Rich men can 
employ able representatives, and in this way they can 
inform themselves accurately of what occurs to their 



360 LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 

belongings at a distance. Without riches, however, we 
may sometimes have a friend on the spot who will see 
to things for us, which is one of the kindest offices of 
friendship. The most efficient friend is one who will 
not only look to matters of detail, but will take the 
trouble to inform } r ou accurately about them, and for 
this he must be a man of leisure. Such a friend often 
spares one a railway journey by a few clear lines of 
report or explanation. Judging from personal experi- 
ence, I should sa}^ that retired lawyers and retired mili- 
tary officers were admirably adapted to render this great 
service efficiently, and I should suppose that a man who 
had retired from busy commercial life would be scarcely 
less useful, but I should not hope for precision in one 
who had alwa} T s been unoccupied, nor should I expect 
many details from one who was much occupied still. 
The first would lack training and experience ; the sec- 
ond would lack leisure. 

The talent for accuracy in affairs may be distinct 
from literal talent and education, and though we have 
been considering the difficulty of corresponding on 
matters of business with the uneducated, we must not 
too hastily infer that because a man is inaccurate in 
spelling, and inelegant in phraseologj", he may not be 
an agreeable and efficient business correspondent. 
There was a time when all the greatest men of busi- 
ness in England were uncertain spellers. Clear expres- 
sion and completeness of statement are more valuable 
than any other qualities in a business correspondent. 
I sometimes have to correspond with a tradesman in 
Paris who rose from an humble origin and scarcely 



LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 361 

produces what a schoolmaster would consider a pass- 
able letter ; yet his letters are models in essential qual- 
ities, as he always removes by plain statements or 
questions every possibility of a mistake, and if there 
is any want of absolute precision in my orders he is 
sure to find out the deficiency, and to call my attention 
to it sharply. 

The habit of not acknowledging orders is one of the 
worst negative vices in business correspondence. It is 
most inconveniently common in France, but happily 
much rarer in England. Where this vice prevails you 
cannot tell whether the person }~ou wish to employ has 
read } T our order or not ; and if you suppose him to have 
read it, you have no reason to feel sure that he has 
understood it, or will execute it in time. 

It is a great gain to the writer of letters to be able 
to make them brief and clear at the same time, but as 
there is obscurity in a labyrinth of many words so there 
may be another kind of obscurity from their paucity, — 
that kind which Horace alluded to with reference to 

poetry, — 

" Brevis esse laboro 
Obscurus fio." 

Sometimes one additional word would spare the 
reader a doubt or a misunderstanding. This is likely 
to become more and more the dominant fault of corre- 
spondence as it imitates the brevity of the telegram. 

Observe the interesting use of the word laboro by 
Horace. You may, in fact, labor to be brief, although 
the result is an appearance of less labor than if you had 
written at ease. It ma} T take more time to write a very 



362 LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 

short letter than one of twice the length, the only gain 
in this case being to the receiver. 

Letters of business often appear to be written in the 
most rapid and careless haste ; the writing is almost 
illegible from its speed, the composition slovenly, the 
letter brief. And yet such a letter may have cost 
hours of deliberate reflection before one word of it was 
committed to paper. It is the rapid registering of a 
slowly matured decision. 

It is a well-known principle of modern business cor- 
respondence that if a letter refers only to one subject 
it is more likely to receive attention than if it deals 
with several ; therefore if you have several different 
orders or directions to give it is bad policy to write 
them all at once, unless you are absolutely compelled 
to do so because they are all equally pressing. Even 
if there is the same degree of urgency for all, yet a 
practical impossibility that all should be executed at 
the same time, it is still the best polic\ T to give your 
orders successively and not more quickly than they can 
be executed. The only danger of this is that the re- 
ceiver of the orders may think at first that they are 
small matters in which postponement signifies little, as 
they can be executed at any time. To prevent this he 
should be strongly warned at first that the order will 
be rapidly followed Iry several others. If there is not 
the same degree of urgency for all, the best wa}^ is to 
make a private register of the different matters in the 
order of their urgency, and then to write several short 
notes, at intervals, one about each thing. 

People haA r e such a marvellous power of misunder- 



LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 363 

standing even the very plainest directions that a business 
letter never can be made too clear. It will, indeed, 
frequently happen that language itself is not clear 
enough for the purposes of explanation without the 
help of drawing, and drawing may not be clear to one 
who has not been educated to understand it, which 
compels you to have recourse to modelling. In these 
cases the task of the letter-writer is greatly simplified, 
as he has nothing to do but foresee and prevent any 
misunderstanding of the drawing or model. 

Every material thing constructed b}* mankind may 
be explained by the three kinds of mechanical drawing, 
— plan, section, and elevation, — but the difficult} 7 , is 
that so many people are unable to understand plans and 
sections ; they only understand elevations, and not 
always even these. The special incapacity to under- 
stand plans and sections is common in every rank of 
society, and it is not uncommon even in the practical 
trades. All letter- writing that refers to material con- 
struction would be immensely simplified if, \>y a general 
rule in popular and other education, every future man 
and woman in the country were taught enough about 
mechanical drawing to be able at least to read it. 

It is delightful to correspond about construction with 
any trained architect or engineer, because to such a 
correspondent } t ou can explain everything briefly, with 
the perfect certainty of being accurately understood. 
It is terrible toil to have to explain construction by 
letter to a man who does not understand mechanical 
drawing ; and when you have given great labor to your 
explanation, it is the merest chance whether he will 



364 LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 

catch your meaning or not. The evil does not stop at 
mechanical drawing. Not only do uneducated people 
misunderstand a mechanical plan or section, but they 
are quite as liable to misunderstand a perspective draw- 
ing, as the great architect and draughtsman Viollet-le- 
Duc charmingly exemplified by the work of an intelligent 
child. A little boy had drawn a cat as he had seen it in 
front with its tail standing up, and this front view was 
stupidly misunderstood by a mature bourgeois, who 
thought the animal was a biped (as the hind-legs were 
hidden), and believed the erect tail to be some unknown 
object sticking out of the nondescript creature's head. 
If you draw a board in perspective (other than iso- 
metrical) a workman is quite likely to think that one 
end of it is to be narrower than the other. 

Business correspondence in foreign languages is a 
very simple matter when it deals only with plain facts, 
and it does not require any very extensive knowledge of 
the foreign tongue to write a common order ; but if any 
delicate or complicated matter has to be explained, or if 
touchy sensitiveness in the foreigner has to be soothed 
by management and tact, then a thorough knowledge of 
the shades of expression is required, and this is ex- 
tremely rare. The statement of bare facts, or the utter- 
ance of simple wants, is indeed only a part of business 
correspondence, for men of business, though they are 
not supposed to disphry sentiment in affairs, are in 
reality just as much human beings as other men, and 
consequently they have feelings which are to be con- 
sidered. A correspondent who is able to write a foreign 
language with delicac} 7 and tact will often attain his 



LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 365 

object when one with a ruder and more imperfect knowl- 
edge of the language would meet with certain failure, 
though he asked for exactly the same thing. 

It is surely possible to be civil and even polite in 
business correspondence without using the deplorable 
commercial slang which exists, I believe, in every 
modern language. The proof that such abstinence is 
possible is that some of the most efficient and most 
active men of business never have recourse to it at all. 
This commercial slang consists in the substitution of 
conventional terms originally intended to be more cour- 
teous than plain English, French, etc., but which, in 
fact, from their mechanical use, become wholly destitute 
of that best politeness which is personal, and does not 
depend upon set phrases that can be copied out of a 
tradesman's model letter-writer. Anybody but a trades- 
man calls your letter a letter ; why should an English 
tradesman call it "your favor," and a French one 
" votre honoree"? A gentleman writing in the month 
of May speaks of April, May, and June, when a trades- 
man carefully avoids the names of the months, and 
calls them ultimo, courant, snidproximo • whilst instead 
of saying " by" or " according to," like other English- 
men, he sa} T s per. This style was touched upon b} T 
Scott in Provost Crosbie's letter to Alexander Fairford : 
"Dear Sir — Your respected favor of 25th ultimo, per 
favor of Mr. Darsie Latimer, reached me in safety." 
This is thought to be a finished commercial style. One 
sometimes meets with the most astonishing and com- 
plicated specimens of it, which the authors are evidently 
proud of as proofs of their high commercial training. 



SG6 LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 

I regret not to have kept some fine examples of these, 
as their perfections are far beyond all imitation. This is 
not surprising when we reflect that the very worst com- 
mercial style is the result of a striving by many minds, 
during several generations, after a preposterous ideal. 

Tradesmen deserve credit for understanding the one 
element of courtesy* in letter-writing which has been 
neglected by gentlemen. They value legible hand- 
writing, and they print clear names and addresses on 
their letter-paper, b}^ which they spare much trouble. 

Before closing this chapter let me say something 
about the reading of business letters as well as the 
writiug of them. It is, perhaps, a harder duty to read 
such letters with the necessary degree of attention than 
to compose them, for the author has his head charged 
with the subject, and writing the letter is a relief to 
him ; but to the receiver the matter is new, and however 
lucid may be the exposition it alwa} T s requires some 
degree of real attention on his part. How are you, 
being at a distance, to get an indolent man to bestow 
that necessary attention ? He feels secure from a per- 
sonal visit, and indulges his indolence by neglecting 
your concerns, even when they are also his own. Long 
ago I heard an English Archdeacon tell the following 
story about his Bishop. The prelate was one of that 
numerous class of men who loathe the sight of a busi- 
ness letter ; and he had indulged his indolence in that 
respect to such a degree that, little by little, he had 
arrived at the fatal stage where one leaves letters 
unopened for da} T s or weeks. At one particular time 
the Archdeacon was aware of a great arrear of mi- 



LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 367 

opened letters, and impressed his lordship with the 
necessity for taking some note of their contents. Yield- 
ing to a stronger will, the Bishop began to read ; and 
one of the first communications was from a wealthy 
man who offered a large sum for church purposes (I 
think for building), but if the offer was not accepted 
within a certain lapse of time he declared his intention 
of making it to that which a Bishop loveth not — a dis- 
senting community. The prelate had opened the letter 
too late, and he lost the money. I believe that the 
Archdeacon's vexation at the loss was more than 
counterbalanced by gratification that his hierarchical 
superior had received such a lesson for his neglect. 
Yet he did but imitate Napoleon, of whom Emerson 
says, "He directed Bourrienue to leave all letters un- 
opened for three weeks, and then observed with satis- 
faction how large a part of the correspondence had 
disposed of itself and no longer required an answer." 
This is a very unsafe system to adopt, as the case of 
the Bishop proves. Things may "dispose of them- 
selves " in the wrong waj T , like wine in a leaky cask, 
which, instead of putting itself carefully into a sound 
cask, goes trickling into the earth. 

The indolence of some men in reading and answering 
letters of business would be incredible if they did not 
give clear evidence of it. The most remarkable ex- 
ample that ever came under my notice is the following. 
A French artist, not by any means in a condition of 
superfluous prosperity, exhibited a picture at the Salon. 
He waited in Paris till after the opening of the exhibi- 
tion and then went down into the country. On the day 



368 LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 

of his departure he received letters from two different 
collectors expressing a desire to purchase his work, and 
asking its price. Any real man of business would have 
seized upon such an opportunity at once. He would 
have answered both letters, stayed in town, and con- 
trived to set the two amateurs bidding against each 
other. The artist in question was one of those un- 
accountable mortals who would rather sacrifice all their 
chances of life than indite a letter of business, so he 
left both inquiries unanswered, saying that if the men 
had really wanted the picture they would have called 
to see him. He never sold it, and some time after- 
wards was obliged to give up his profession, quite as 
much from the lack of promptitude in affairs as from 
any artistic deficiency. 

Sometimes letters of business are read, but read so 
carelessly that it would be better if they were thrown 
unopened into the fire. I have seen some astounding 
instances of this, and, what is most remarkable, of 
repeated and incorrigible carelessness in the same per- 
son or firm, compelling one to the conclusion that in 
corresponding with that person or that firm the clearest 
language, the plainest writing, and the most legible 
numerals, are all equally without effect. I am thinking 
particularly of one case, intimately known to me in all 
its details, in which a business correspondence of some 
duration was finally abandoned, after infinite annoj 7 - 
ance, for the simple reason that it was impossible to 
get the members of the firm, or their representatives, 
to attend to written orders with any degree of accuracy. 
Even whilst writing this very Essay I have given an 



LETTERS OF BUSINESS. 369 

order with regard to which I foresaw a probable error. 
Knowing by experience that a probable error is almost 
certain if steps are not taken energetically to prevent 
it, I requested that this error might not be committed, 
and to attract more attention to my request I wrote the 
paragraph containing it in red ink, — a very unusual pre- 
caution. The foreseen error was accurately committed. 



24 



370 ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 



ESSAY XXV. 

ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 

iryROB ABLY few of my mature readers have attained 
■*■ middle age without receiving a number of anony- 
mous letters. Such letters are not always offensive, 
sometimes they are amusing, sometimes considerate 
and kind, yet there is in all cases a feeling of annoy- 
ance on receiving them, because the writer has made 
himself inaccessible to a reply. It is as if a man in a 
mask whispered a word in your ear and then vanished 
suddenly in a crowd. You wish to answer a calumny 
or acknowledge a kindness, and you may talk to the 
winds and streams. 

Anonymous letters of the worst kind have a certain 
value to the student of human nature, because they 
afford him glimpses of the evil spirit that disguises 
itself under the fair seemings of society. You believe 
with childlike simplicity and innocence that, as you 
have never done an} T intentional injury to a human 
being, you cannot have a human enemy, and you make 
the startling discoveiy that somewhere in the world, 
perhaps even amongst the smiling people } r ou meet at 
dances and dinners, there are creatures who will have 
recourse to the foulest slanders if thereby they may 
hope to do 3 7 ou an injuiy. What can you have done 
to excite such bitter animosity ? You may both have 



ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 371 

done much and neglected much. You may have had 
some superiority of body, mind, or fortune ; you. may 
have neglected to soothe some jealous vanity by the 
flattery it craved with a tormenting hunger. 

The simple fact that you seem happier than Envy 
thinks you ought to be is of itself enough to excite a 
strong desire to diminish your offensive happiness or 
put an end to it entirely. That is the reason why 
people who are going to be married receive anonymous 
letters. If they are not really happy they have every 
appearance of being happy, which is not less intolera- 
ble. The anonymous letter- writer seeks to put a stop 
to such a state of things. He might go to one of the 
parties and slander the other openly, but it would re- 
quire courage to do that directly to his face. A letter 
might be written, but if name and address were given 
there would come an inconvenient demand for proofs. 
One course remains, offering that immunity from conse- 
quences which is soothing to the nerves of a coward. 
The envious or jealous man can throw his vitriol in the 
dark and slip away unperceived — he can write an 
anonymous letter. 

Has the reader ever really tried to picture to himself 
the state of that man's or woman's mind (for women 
write these things also) who can sit down, take a sheet 
of paper, make a rough draft of an anonymous letter, 
copy it out in a very legible yet carefully disguised 
hand, and make arrangements for having it posted at 
a distance from the place where it was written? Such 
things are constantly done. At this minute there are 
a certain number of men and women in the world who 



372 ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 

are vile enough to do all that simply in order to spoil 
the happiness of some person whom they regard with 
"envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. ,, I 
see in my mind's eye the gentleman — the man having 
all the apparent delicacy and refinement of a gentleman 
— who is writing a letter intended to blast the char- 
acter of an acquaintance. Perhaps he meets that ac- 
quaintance in societ}^, and shakes hands with him, and 
pretends to take an interest in his health. Meanwhile 
he secretly reflects upon the particular sort of calumny 
that will have the greatest degree of verisimilitude. 
Everj-thing depends upon his talent in devising the 
most credible sort of calumny, — not the calumny most 
likely to meet general credence, but that which is most 
likely to be believed by the person to whom it is ad- 
dressed, and most likely to do injury when believed. 
The anonj'mous calumniator has the immense advan- 
tage on his side that most people are prone to believe 
evil, and that good people are unfortunately the most 
prone, as they hate evil so intensely that even the very 
phantom of it arouses their anger, and they too fre- 
quently do not stop to inquire whether it is a phantom 
or a reality. The clever calumniator is careful not 
to go too far ; he will advance something that might 
be or that might have been ; he does not love le vrai, 
but he is a careful student of le vraisemblable. He 
will assume an appearance of reluctance, he will drop 
hints more terrible than assertions, because they are 
vague, mysterious, disquieting. When he thinks he 
has done enough he stops in time; he has inoculated 
the drop of poison, and can wait till it takes effect. 



ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 373 

It must be rather an anxious time for the anonymous 
letter- writer when he has sent off his missive. In the 
nature of things he cannot receive an answer, and it 
is not easy for him to ascertain very soon what has 
been the result of his enterprise. If he has been try- 
ing to prevent a marriage he does not know immedi- 
ately if the engagement is broken off, and if it is not 
broken off he has to wait till the wedding-day before 
he is quite sure of his own failure, and to suffer mean- 
while from hope deferred and constantly increasing ap- 
prehension. If the rupture occurs he has a moment of 
Satanic joy, but it may be due to some other cause 
than the success of his own calumny, so that he is 
never quite sure of having himself attained his object. 

It is believed that most people who are engaged to 
be married receive anonymous letters recommending 
them to break off the match. Not only are such letters 
addressed to the betrothed couple themselves, but also 
to their relations. If there is not a doubt that the 
statements in such letters are purely calumnious, the 
right course is to destroy them immediately and never 
allude to them afterwards ; but if there is the faintest 
shadow of a doubt — if there is the vaguest feeling that 
there may be some ground for the attack — then the only 
course is to send the letter to the person accused, and 
to say that this is done in order to afford him an oppor- 
tunity for answering the anonymous assailant. I re- 
member a case in which this was done with the best 
results. A professional man without fortune was going 
to marry a j-oung heiress ; I do not mean a great heir- 
ess, but one whose fortune might be a temptation. 



374 ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 

Her family received the usual anonymous letters, and 
in one of them it was stated that the aspirant's father, 
who had been long dead, had dishonored himself by 
base conduct with regard to a public trust in a certain 
town where he occupied a post of great responsibility 
towards the municipal authorities. The letter was 
shown to the son, and he was asked if he knew any- 
thing of the matter, and if he could do anything to 
clear away the imputation. Then came the difficulty 
that the alleged betrayal of trust was stated to have 
occurred twenty years before, and that the Mayor was 
dead, and probably most of the common councillors 
also. What was to be done? It is not easy to dis- 
prove a calumny, and the onus of proof ought always 
to be thrown upon the calumniator, but this calumnia- 
tor was anonymous and intangible, so the son of the 
victim was requested to repel the charge. By a very 
unusual and most fortunate accident, his father had 
received on quitting the town in question a letter from 
the Mayor of a most exceptional character, in which 
he spoke with warm and grateful appreciation of ser- 
vices rendered and of the happy relations of trust and 
confidence that had subsisted between himself and the 
slandered man down to the very termination of their 
intercourse. This letter, again by a most lucky acci- 
dent, had been preserved by the widow, and by means 
of it one dead man defended the memory of another. 
It removed the greatest obstacle to the marriage ; but 
another anonymous writer, or the same in another 
handwriting, now alleged that the slandered man had 
died of a disease likely to be inherited by his posterity- 






ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 375 

Here, again, luck was on the side of the defence, as 
the physician who had attended him was still alive, so 
that this second invention was as easily disposed of 
as the first. The marriage took place ; it has been 
more than usually happy, and the children are pictures 
of health. 

The trouble to which anonymous letter-writers put 
themselves to attain their ends must sometimes be very 
great. I remember a case in which some of these 
people must have contrived by means of spies or agents 
to procure a private address in a foreign country, and 
must have been at great pains also to ascertain certain 
facts in England which were carefully mingled with the 
lies in the calumnious letter. The nameless writer was 
evidently well informed, possibly he or she may have 
been a "friend" of the intended victim. In this case 
no attention was paid to the attack, which did not 
dela3 T the marriage by a single hour. Long afterwards 
the married pair happened to be talking about anony- 
mous letters, and it then appeared that each side 
had received several of these missives, coarsely or in- 
geniously concocted, but had given them no more 
attention than they deserved. 

An anonymous letter is sometimes written in col- 
laboration by two persons of different degrees of ability^. 
When this is done one of the slanderers generally sup- 
plies the basis of fact necessary to give an appearance 
of knowledge, and the other supplies or improves the 
imaginative part of the common performance and its 
literary style. Sometimes one of the two may be 
detected by the nature of the references to fact, or by 



376 ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 

the supposed writer's personal interest in bringing about 
a certain result. 

It is ver}^ difficult at the first glance entirely to resist 
the effect of a clever anonymous letter, and perhaps it 
is only men of clear strong sense and long experience 
who at once overcome the first shock. In a verjr short 
time, however, the phantom evil grows thin and dis- 
appears, and the motive of the writer is guessed at or 
discerned. 

The following brief anonymous letter or one closely 
resembling it (I quote from memory) was once received 
by an English gentleman on his travels. 

" Dear Sir, — I congratulate you on the fact that you will 
be a grandfather in about two months. I mention this as you 
may like to purchase baby-linen for your grandchild during 
your absence. I am, Sir, yours sincerely, 

" A Well-wisher." 

The receiver had a family of grown-up children of 
whom not one was married. The letter gave him a 
slight but perceptible degree of disquietude which he 
put aside to the best of his abilit} 7 . In a few days came 
a signed letter from one of his female servants confess- 
ing that she was about to become a mother, and claiming 
his protection as the grandfather of the child. It then 
became evident that the anonymous letter had been 
written by the girl's lover, who was a tolerably educated 
man whilst she was uneducated, and that the pair had 
entered into this little plot to obtain money. The 
matter ended by the dismissal of the girl, who then 
made threats until she was placed in the hands of the 
police. Other circumstances were recollected proving 



ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 377 

her to be a remarkably audacious liar and of a slander- 
ous disposition. 

The torture that an anonymous letter may inflict 
depends far more on the nature of the person who 
receives it than on the circumstances it relates. A 
ealous and suspicious nature, not opened by much ex- 
perience or knowledge of the world, is the predes- 
tined victim of the anonymous torturer. Such a nature 
jumps at evil report like a fish at an artificial fly, and 
feels the anguish of it immediately. By a law that 
seems really cruel such natures seize with most avidity 
on those very slanders that cause them the most pain. 

A kind Of anonj^mous letter of which we have heard 
much in the present disturbed state of European society 
is the letter containing threats of physical injury. It 
informs you that you will be " done for " or " disabled " 
in a short time, and exhorts } T ou in the meanwhile to 
prepare for your awful doom. The object of these 
letters is to deprive the receiver of all feeling of security 
or comfort in existence. His consolation is that a real 
intending murderer would probably be thinking too much 
of his own perilous enterprise to indulge in correspond- 
ence about it, and we do not perceive that the attacks 
on public men are at all proportionate in number to the 
menaces addressed to them. 

As there are malevolent anonymous letters intended 
to inflict the most wearing anxiet3 T , so there are benevo- 
lent ones written to save our souls. Some theologically 
minded person, often of the female sex, is alarmed for 
our spiritual state because she fears that we have doubts 
about the supernatural, and so she sends us books that 



378 ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 

only make us wonder at the mental condition for which 
such literature can be suitable. I remember one of my 
female anonymous correspondents who took it for 
granted that I was like a ship drifting about without 
compass or rudder (a great mistake on her part) , and 
so she offered me the safe and spacious haven ot 
Swedenborgianism ! Others will tell you of the u great 
pain " with which they have read this or that passage 
of your writings, to which an author may always reply 
that as there is no Act of Parliament compelling British 
subjects to read his books the sufferers have only to let 
them alone in order to spare themselves the dolorous 
sensations they complain of. 

Some kind anonymous correspondents write to con- 
sole us for offensive criticism by maintaining the truth 
of our assertions as supported by their own experience. 
I remember that when the novel of ' ' Wenderholme " was 
published, and naturally attacked for its dreadful por- 
traiture of the drinking habits of a past generation, a 
lady wrote to me anonymously from a locality of the 
kind described bearing mournful witness to the veracity 
of the description. 1 In this case the employment of 
the anonymous form was justified by two considerations. 
There was no offensive intention, and the lady had to 
speak of her own relations whose names she desired to 
conceal. Authors frequently receive letters of gently 

1 I need hardly say that there has been immense improvement 
in this respect, and that such descriptions have no application to 
the Lancashire of to-day ; indeed, they were never true, in that 
extreme degree, of Lancashire generally, but only of certain small 
localities which were at one time like spots of local disease on a 
generally vigorous body. 



ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 379 

expressed criticism or remonstrance from readers who 
do not give their names. The only objection to these 
communications, which are often interesting, is that it 
is rather teasing and vexatious to be deprived of the 
opportunity for answering them. The reader ma}' like 
to see one of these gentle anonymous letters. An un- 
married lady of mature age (for there appears to be no 
reason to doubt the veracity with which she gives a 
slight account of herself) has been reading one of my 
books and thinks me not quite just to a most respect- 
able and by no means insignificant class in English 
society. She therefore takes me to task, — not at all 
unkindly. 

" Dear Sir, — I have often wished to thank you for the 
intense pleasure your books have given me, especially the 
' Painter's Camp in the Highlands,' the word-pictures of 
which reproduced the enjoyment, intense even to pain, of the 
Scottish scenery. 

' ' I have only now become acquainted with your ' Intel- 
lectual Life,' which has also given me great pleasure, though 
of another kind. Its general fairness and candor induce 
me to protest against your judgment of a class of women 
whom I am sure you underrate from not having a sufficient 
acquaintance with their capabilities. 

* ' ' Women who are not impelled by some masculine influence 
are not superior, either in knowledge or in discipline of the mind, 
at the age of fifty to what they were at twenty-five. . . . The best 
illustration of this is a sisterhood of three or four rich old maids. 
. . . You will observe that they invariably remain, as to their 
education, where they were left by their teachers many years be- 
fore. . . . Even in what most interests them — theology, they 
repeat but do not extend their information. ' 

" My circle of acquaintance is small, nevertheless I know 
many women between twenty-five and forty whose culture is 



380 ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 

always steadily progressing; who keep up an acquaintance 
with literature for its own sake, and not ' impelled ' thereto 
' by masculine influence; ' who, though without creative power, 
yet have such capability of reception that they can appreciate 
the best authors of the day; whose theology is not quite the 
fossil you represent it, though I confess it is for but a small 
number of my acquaintance that I can claim the power of 
judicially estimating the various schools of theology. 

" Without being specialists, the more thoughtful of our 
class have such an acquaintance with current literature that 
they are able to enter into the progress of the great ques- 
tions of the day, and may even estimate the more fairly a 
Gladstone or a Disraeli for being spectators instead of actors 
in politics. 

"I have spoken of my own acquaintances, but they are 
such as may be met within any middle-class society. For 
myself, I look back to the painful bewilderment of twenty- 
five and contrast it with satisfaction with the brighter per- 
ceptions of forty, finding out 'a little more, and yet a little 
more, of the eternal order of the universe.' One reason for 
your underrating us may be that our receptive powers only 
are in constant use, and we have little power of expression. 
I dislike anonymous letters as a rule, but as I write as the 
representative of a class, I beg to sign myself, 
" Yours gratefully, 
"One of Three or Four Rich Old Maids. 
" November 13, 1883." 

Letters of this kind give no pain to the receiver, 
except when they compel him to an unsatisfactory kind 
of self-examination. In the present case I make the 
best amends by giving publicity and permanence to this 
clearly expressed criticism. Something may be said, 
too, in defence of the passages incriminated. Let me 
attempt it in the form of a letter which may possibly 
fall under the eye of the Rich Old Maid. 



ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 381 

Dear Madam, — Your letter has duly reached me, and 
produced feelings of compunction. Have I indeed been 
guilty of injustice towards a class so deserving of respect and 
consideration as the Rich Old Maids of England ? It has 
always seemed to me one of the privileges of my native 
country that such a class should nourish there so much more 
amply and luxuriantly than in other lands. Married women 
are absorbed in the cares and anxieties of their own house- 
holds, but the sympathies of old maids spread themselves over 
a wider area. Balzac hated them, and described them as 
having souls overflowing with gall ; but Balzac was a French- 
man, and if he was just to the rare old maids of his native 
country (which I cannot believe) he knew nothing of the 
more numerous old maids of Great Britain. I am not in 
Balzac's position. Dear friends of mine, and dearer relations, 
have belonged to that kindly sisterhood. 

The answer to your objection is simple. " The Intellectual 
Life " was not published in 1883 but in 1873. It was written 
some time before, and the materials had been gradually 
accumulating in the author's mind several years before it 
was written. Consequently your criticism is of a much later 
date than the work you criticise, and as you are forty in 1883 
you were a young maid in the times I was thinking of when 
writing. It is certainly true that many women of the now 
past generation, particularly those who lived in celibacy, had 
a remarkable power of remaining intellectually in the same 
place. This power is retained by some of the present 
generation, but it is becoming rarer every day because the 
intellectual movement is so strong that it is drawing a con- 
stantly increasing number of women along with it ; indeed 
this movement is so accelerated as to give rise to a new 
anxiety, and make us look back with a wistful regret. We 
are now beginning to perceive that a certain excellent old 
type of Englishwomen whom we remember with the greatest 
affection and respect will soon belong as entirely to the past 
as if they had lived in the days of Queen Elizabeth. From the 
intellectual point of view their lives were hardly worth living, 
but we are beginning to ask ourselves whether their igno- 



382 ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 

ranee (I use the plain term) and their prejudices (the plain 
term again) were not essential parts of a whole that com- 
manded our respect. Their simplicity of mind may have 
been a reason why they had so much simplicity of purpose in 
well-doing. Their strength of prejudice may have aided 
them to keep with perfect steadfastness on the side of moral 
and social order. Their intellectual restfulness in a few 
clear settled ideas left a degree of freedom to their energy in 
common duties that may not always be possible amidst the 
bewildering theories of an unsettled and speculative age. 
Faithfully yours, 
The Author of " The Intellectual Life." 



AMUSEMENTS. 383 



ESSAY XXVI. 

AMUSEMENTS. 

/^VNE of the most unexpected discoveries that we 
^^ make on entering the reflective stage of exist- 
ence is that amusements are social obligations. 

The next discover}*- of this kind is that the higher 
the rank of the person the more obligatory and the 
more numerous do his so-called "amusements" be- 
come, till finally we reach the princely life which seems 
to consist almost exclusively of these observances. 

Why should it ever be considered obligatory upon a 
man to amuse himself in some way settled by others? 
There appear to be two principal reasons for this. The 
first is, that when amusements are practised by many 
persons in common it appears unsociable and ungra- 
cious to abstain. Even if the amusement is not inter- 
esting in itself it is thought that the society it leads us 
into ought to be a sufficient reason for following it. 

The second reason is that, like all things which are 
repeated by many people together, amusements soon 
become fixed customs, and have all the weight and 
authority of customs, so that people dare not abstain 
from observing them for fear of social penalties. 

If the amusements are expensive they become not 
only a sign of wealth but an actual demonstration and 
displa} 7 of it, and as nothing in the world is so much 



384 AMUSEMENTS. 

respected as wealth, or so efficient a help to social posi- 
tion, and as the expenditure which is visible produces 
far more effect upon the mind than that which is not 
seen, it follows that all costly amusements are useful 
for self-assertion in the world, and become even a 
means of maintaining the political importance of great 
families. 

On the other hand, not to be accustomed to expen- 
sive amusements implies that one has lived amongst 
people of narrow means, so that most of those who 
have social ambition are eager to seize upon every 
opportunity for enlarging their experience of expensive 
amusements in order that they may talk about them 
afterwards, and so affirm their position as members of 
the upper class. 

The dread of appearing unsociable, of seeming rebel- 
lious against custom, or inexperienced in the habits of 
the rich, are reasons quite strong enough for the main- 
tenance of customary amusements even when there is 
very little real enjoyment of them for their own sake. 

But, in fact, there are alwa} T s some people who prac- 
tise these amusements for the sake of the pleasure they 
give, and as these people are likely to excel the others 
in vivacity, activity, and skill, as they have more en- 
train and gayety, and talk more willingly and heartily 
about the sports they love, so the} 7 naturally come to 
lead opinion upon the subject and to give it an appear- 
ance of earnestness and warmth that is beyond its 
real condition. Hence the tone of conversation about 
amusements, though it ma} 7 accurately represent the sen- 
timents of those who enjoy them, does not represent all 



AMUSEMENTS. 385 

opinion fairly. The opposite side of the question found 
a witty exponent in Sir George Cornewall Lewis, when 
he uttered that immortal saying hy which his name will 
endure when the recollection of his political services 
has passed away, — " How tolerable life would be were 
it not for its pleasures ! " There yo\x have the feeling 
of the thousands who submit and conform, but who 
would have much to say if it were in good taste to 
say anything against pleasures that are offered to us in 
hospitality. 

Amusements themselves become work when under- 
taken for an ulterior purpose such as the maintenance 
of political influence. A great man goes through a 
certain regular series of dinners, balls, games, shoot- 
ing and hunting parties, races, wedding-breakfasts, 
visits to great houses, excursions on land and water, 
and all these things have the outward appearance of 
amusement, but may, in reality, be labors that the great 
man undertakes for some purpose entirely outside of 
the frivolous things themselves. A Prime Minister 
scarcely goes beyond political dinners, but what an 
endless series of engagements are undertaken by a 
Prince of Wales ! Such things are an obligation for 
him, and when the obligation is accepted with unfail- 
ing patience and good temper, the Prince is not only 
working, but working with a certain elegance and grace 
of art, often involving that prettiest kind of self-sacri- 
fice which hides itself under an appearance of enjoy- 
ment. Nobody supposes that the social amusements 
so regularly gone through by the eldest son of Queen 
Victoria can be, in all cases, very entertaining to him ; 
25 



886 AMUSEMENTS. 

we suppose them to be accepted as forms of human 
intercourse that bring him into personal relations with 
his future subjects. The difference between this Prince 
and King Louis II. of Bavaria is perhaps the most 
striking contrast in modern royal existences. Prince 
Albert Edward is accessible to everybody, and shares 
the common pleasures of his countrymen ; the Bavarian 
sovereign is never so happy as when in one of his 
romantic and magnificent residences, surrounded by 
the sublimity of nature and the embellishments of art, 
he sits alone and dreams as he listens to the strains 
of exquisite music. Has he not erected his splendid 
castle on a rock, like the builder of " The Palace of 
Art"? 

" A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish'd brass 
I chose. The ranged ramparts bright 
From level meadow-bases of deep grass 
Suddenly scaled the light. 

" Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf 
The rock rose clear, or winding stair. 
My soul would live alone unto herself 
In her high palace there." 

The life of the King of Bavaria, sublimely serene in 
its independence, is a long series of tranquil omissions. 
There may be a wedding- feast in one of his palaces, 
but such an occurrence only seems to hirn the best of 
all reasons why he should be in another. He escapes 
from the pleasures and interests of daily life, making 
himself an earthly paradise of architecture, music, and 
gardens, and lost in his long dream, assuredly one 
of the most poetical figures in the biographies of kings, 



AMUSEMENTS. 387 

and one of the most interesting, but how remote from 
men ! This remoteness is due, in great part, to a sin- 
cerity of disposition which declines amusements that 
do not amuse, and desires only those real pleasures 
which are in perfect harmony with one's own nature 
and constitution. We like the sociability, the ready 
human sympathy, of the Prince of Wales ; we think 
that in his position it is well for him to be able to keep 
all that endless series of engagements, but has not 
King Louis some claim upon our indulgence even in 
his eccentricity? He has refused the weary round of 
false amusements and made his choice of ideal pleasure. 
If he condescended to excuse himself, his Apologia 
pro vita sua might take a form somewhat resembling 
this. He might say, " I was born to a great fortune 
and only ask leave to enjoy it in my own way. The 
world's amusements are an infliction that I consider 
myself at liberty to avoid. I love musical or silent 
solitude, and the enchantments of a fair garden and a 
lofty dwelling amidst the glorious Bavarian mountains. 
Let the noisy world go its way with its bitter wrang- 
lings, its dishonest politics, its sanguinary wars ! I 
set up no tyranny. I leave my subjects to enjoy their 
brief human existence in their own fashion, and they 
let me dream my dream." 

These are not the world's ways nor the world's view. 
The world considers it essential to the character of a 
prince that he should be at least apparently happy in 
those pleasures which are enjoyed in societ} r , that he 
should seem to enjoy them along with others to show 
his fellow-feeling with common men, and not sit by him- 



388 AMUSEMENTS. 

self, like King Louis in his theatre, when " Tannhauser " 
is performed for the royal ears alone. 

Of the many precious immunities that belong to 
humble station there are none more valuable than the 
freedom from false amusements. A poor man is under 
one obligation, he must work, but his work itself is a 
blessed deliverance from a thousand other obligations. 
He is not obliged to shoot, and hunt, and dance against 
his will, he is not obliged to affect interest and pleasure 
in games that only weary him, he has not to receive 
tiresome strangers in long ceremonious repasts when he 
would rather have a simple short dinner with his wife. 
Beranger sang the happiness of beggars with his sym- 
pathetic humorous philosophy, but in all seriousness 
it might be maintained that the poor are happier than 
they know. They get their easy unrestrained human 
intercourse by chance meetings, and greetings, and 
gossipings, and they are spared all the acting, all the 
feigning, that is connected with the routine of imposed 
enjoyments. 

Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less 
trying to patience than feigned pleasure. You dislike 
accounts and you dislike balls, but though your dislike 
may be nearly equal in both cases you will assuredly 
find that the time hangs less heavily when you are 
resolutely grappling with the details of your account- 
books than when you are only wishing that the dancers 
would go to bed. The reason is that any hard work, 
whatever it is, has the qualities of a mental tonic, 
whereas unenjoyed pleasures have an opposite effect, 
and even though work may be uncongenial you see a 



AMUSEMENTS. 389 

sort of result, whilst a false pleasure leaves no result 
but the extreme fatigue that attends it, — a kind of 
fatigue quite exceptional in its nature, and the most 
disagreeable that is known to man. 

The dislike for false amusements is often misunder- 
stood to be a puritanical intolerance of all amusement. 
It is in this as in all things that are passionately enjoyed, 
— the false thing is most disliked by those who best 
appreciate the true. 

What may be called the truth or falsehood of amuse- 
ments is not in the amusements themselves, but in the 
relation between one human idios3 T ncrasy and them. 
Every idiosyncrasy has its own strong mysterious 
affinities, generally distinguishable in childhood, always 
clearly distinguishable in youth. We are like a lute or 
a violin, the tuned strings vibrate in answer to certain 
notes but not in answer to others. 

To convert amusements into social customs or obliga- 
tions, to make it a man's duty to shoot birds or ride 
after foxes because it is agreeable to others to discharge 
guns and gallop across fields, is an infringement of 
individual liberty which is less excusable in the case of 
amusements than it is in more serious things. For in 
serious things, in politics and religion, there is always 
the plausible argument that the repression of the in- 
dividual conscience is good for the unity of the State ; 
whereas amusements are supposed to exist for the 
recreation of those who practise them, and when they 
are not enjoyed they are not amusements but something 
else. There is no single English word that exactly 
expresses what they are, but there is a French one, 



390 AMUSEMENTS. 

the word corvee, which means forced labor, labor under 
dictation, all the more unpleasant in these cases that it 
must assume the appearance of enjoyment. 1 

Surely there is nothing in which the independence of 
the individual ought to be so absolute, so unquestioned, 
as in amusements. What right have I, because a thing 
is a pleasant pastime to me, to compel my friend or my 
son to do that thing when it is a corvee to him? No 
man can possibly amuse himself in obedience to a word 
of command, the most he can do is to submit, to try to 
appear amused, wishing all the time that the weary 
task was over. 

To mark the contrast clearly I will describe some 
amusements from the opposite points of view of those 
who enjoy them naturally, and those to whom they 
would be indifferent if they were not imposed, and hate- 
ful if they were. 

Shooting is delightful to genuine sportsmen in many 
ways. It renews in them the sensations of the vigor- 
ous youth of humanity, of the tribes that lived by 
the chase. It brings them into contact with nature, 
gives a zest and interest to hard pedestrian exercise, 
makes the sportsmen minutely acquainted with the 
country, and leads to innumerable observations of the 
habits of wild animals that have the interest without 
the formal pretensions of a science. Shooting is a 
delightful exercise of skill, requiring admirable prompti- 
tude and perfect nerve, so that any success in it is grati- 
fying to self-esteem. Sir Samuel Baker is always proud 

1 Littre derives corvee from the Low-Latin corrogata, from the 
Latin cum and rogare. 



AMUSEMENTS. 391 

of being such a good marksman, and frankly shows his 
satisfaction. "I had fired three beautifully correct 
shots with No. 10 bullets, and seven drachms of powder 
in each charge ; these were so nearly together that they 
occupied a space in her forehead of about three inches." 
He does not aim at an animal in a general way, but 
always at a particular and penetrable spot, recording 
each hit, and the special bullet used. Of course he 
loves his guns. These modern instruments are delight- 
ful toys on account of the highly developed art em- 
ployed in their construction, so that they would be 
charming things to possess, and handle, and admire, 
even if they were never used, whilst the use of them 
gives a terrible power to man. See a good marksman 
when he takes a favorite weapon in his hand ! More 
redoubtable than Roland with the sword Durindal, he 
is comparable rather to Apollo with the silver bow, or 
even to Olympian Zeus himself grasping his thunders. 
Listen to him when he speaks of his weapon ! If he 
thinks 3^ou have the free-masonry of the chase, and can 
understand him, he talks like a poet and lover. Baker 
never fails to tell us what weapon he used on each 
occasion, and how beautifully it performed, and due 
honor and advertisement are kindly given to the maker, 
out of gratitude. 

" I accordingly took my trusty little Fletcher double rifle 
No. 24, and running knee-deep into the water to obtain a 
close shot I fired exactly between the eyes near the crown of 
the head. At the reports of the little Fletcher the hippo 
disappeared. ' ' 

Then he adds an affectionate foot-note about the gun, 



392 AMUSEMENTS. 

praising it for going with him for five years, as if it had 
had a choice about the matter, and could have offered 
its services to another master. He believes it to be 
alive, like a dog. 

" This excellent and handy rifle was made by Thomas 
Fletcher, of Gloucester, and accompanied me like a faithful 
dog throughout my journey of nearly five years to the Albert 
Nyanza, and returned with me to England as good as new." 

In the list of Baker's rifles appears his bow of Ulysses, 
his Child of a Cannon, familiarly called the Baby, throw- 
ing a half-pound explosive shell, a lovely little pet of a 
weapon with a recoil that broke an Arab's collar-bone, 
and was not without some slight effect even upon that 
mighty hunter, its master. 

" Bang went the Baby; round I spun like a weather-cock 
with the blood flowing from my nose, as the recoil had driven 
the top of the hammer deep into the bridge. My Baby not 
only screamed but kicked viciously. However I knew the 
elephant would be bagged, as the half-pound shell had been 
aimed directly behind the shoulder." 

We have the most minute descriptions of the effects 
of these projectiles in the head of a hippopotamus and 
the body of an elephant. " I was quite satisfied with 
my explosive shells/' says the enthusiastic sportsman, 
and the great beasts appear to have been satisfied too. 

Now let me attempt to describe the feelings of a 
man not born with the natural instinct of a sportsman. 
We need not suppose him to be either a weakling or a 
coward. There are strong and brave men who can 
exercise their strength and prove their courage without 
willingly inflicting wounds or death upon any creature. 



AMUSEMENTS. 393 

To some such men a gun is simply an encumbrance, to 
wait for game is a wearisome trial of patience, to follow 
it is aimless wandering, to slaughter it is to do the work 
of a butcher or a poulterer, to wound it is to incur a 
degree of remorse that is entirely destructive of enjoy- 
ment. The fact that somewhere on mountain or in 
forest poor creatures are lying with festering flesh or 
shattered bones to die slowly in pain and hunger, and 
the terrible thirst of the wounded, and all for the pleas- 
ure of a gentleman, — such a fact as that, when clearly 
realized, is not to be got over by anything less powerful 
than the genuine instinct of the sportsman who is him- 
self one of Nature's own born destroyers, as panthers 
and falcons are. The feeling of one who has not the 
sporting instinct has been well expressed as follows by 
Mr. Lewis Morris, in "A Cynic's Day-dream : " — 

" Scant pleasure should I think to gain 
From endless scenes of death and pain ; 
'T would little profit me to slay 
A thousand innocents a day ; 
I should not much delight to tear 
With wolfish dogs the shrieking hare ; 
With horse and hound to track to death 
A helpless wretch that gasps for breath ; 
To make the fair bird check its wing, 
And drop, a dying, shapeless tiling ; 
To leave the joy of all the wood 
A mangled heap of fur and blood, 
Or else escaping, but in vain, 
To pine, a shattered wretch, in pain ; 
Teeming, perhaps, or doomed to see 
Its young brood starve in misery." 

Hunting may be classed with shooting and passed 
over, as the instinct is the same for both, with this dif- 



394 AMUSEMENTS. 

ference only that the huntsman has a natural passion 
for horsemanship that may be wanting to the pedes- 
trian marksman. An amusement entirely apart from 
ever} r other, and requiring a special instinct, is that of 
sailing. 

If you have the nautical passion it was born with 
you, and no reasoning can get it out of you. Every 
sheet of navigable water draws you with a marvellous 
attraction, fills \o\x with an indescribable longing. 
Miles away from anything that can be sailed upon, 
you cannot feel a breeze upon your cheek without 
wishing to be in a sailing-boat to catch it in a spread 
of canvas. A ripple on a duck-pond torments you 
with a teazing reminder of larger surfaces, and if you 
had no other field for navigation you would want to be 
on that duck-pond in a tub. "I would rather have 
a plank and a handkerchief for a sail," said Charles 
Lever, " than resign myself to give up boating." You 
have pleasure merely in being afloat, even without mo- 
tion, and all the degrees of motion under sail have 
their own peculiar charm for you, from an insensible 
gliding through glassy waters to a fight against op- 
posite winds and raging seas. You have a thorough, 
intimate, and affectionate knowledge of all the details 
of your ship. The constant succession of little tasks 
and duties is an unfailing interest, a delightful occupa- 
tion. You enjoy the manual labor, and acquire some 
skill not only as a sailor but as ship's carpenter and 
painter. You take all accidents and disappointments 
cheerfully, and bear even hardship with a merry heart. 
Nautical exercise, though on the humble scale of the 






AMUSEMENTS. 395 

modest amateur, has preserved or improved } T our health 
and activity, and brought you nearer to Nature by 
teaching you the habits of the winds and waters and 
oy displaying to you an endless variety of scenes, al- 
ways with some fresh interest, and often of enchanting 
beauty. 

Now let us suppose that you are simple enough to 
think that what pleases you, who have the instinct, will 
gratify another who is destitute of it. If you have 
power enough to make him accompany you, he will 
pass through the following experiences. 

Try to realize the fact that to him the sailing-boat 
is only a means of locomotion, and that he will refer 
to his watch and compare it with other means of loco- 
motion already known to him, not having the slightest 
affectionate prejudice in its favor or gentle tolerance 
of its defects. If you could always have a steady fair 
wind he would enjoy the boat as much as a coach or a 
very slow railway train, but he will chafe at every de- 
lay. None of the details that delight jovl can have the 
slightest interest for him. The sails, and particularly 
the cordage, seem to him an irritating complication 
which, he thinks, might be simplified, and he will not 
give any mental effort to master them. He cares noth- 
ing about those qualities of sails and hull which have 
been the subject of such profound scientific investiga- 
tion, such long and passionate controversy. You can- 
not speak of anything on board without employing 
technical terms which, however necessary, however 
unavoidable, will seem to him a foolish and useless 
affectation by which an amateur tries to give himself 



396 AMUSEMENTS. 

nautical airs. If you say " the mainsheet" he thinks 
you might have said more rationally and concisely " the 
cord by which you pull towards you that long pole 
which is under the biggest of the sails," and if you say 
" the starboard quarter," he thinks you ought to have 
said, in simple English, "that part of the vessel's side 
that is towards the back end of it and to your right 
hand when you are standing with your face looking 
forwards." If you happen to be becalmed he suffers 
from an infinite ennui. If you have to beat to wind- 
ward he is indifferent to the wonderful art and vexed 
with you because, as his host, you have not had the 
politeness and the forethought to provide a favorable 
breeze. If you are a yachtsman of limited means and 
your guest has to take a small share in working the 
vessel, he will not perform it with any cheerful alacrit}^, 
but consider it unfit for a gentleman. If this goes on 
for long it is likely that there will be irritation on both 
sides, snappish expressions, and a quarrel. Who is 
in fault ? Both are excusable in the false situation that 
has been created, but it ought not to have been created 
at all. You ought not to have invited a man without 
nautical instincts, or he ought not to have accepted the 
invitation. He was a charming companion on land, 
and that misled you both. Meet him on land again, 
receive him hospitably at your house. I would say 
" forgive him ! " if there were anything to forgive, but 
it is not any fault of his or any merit of yours if, 
by the irrevocable fate of congenital idiosyncrasy, the 
amusement that you were destined to seek and enjoy 
is the corvee that he was destined to avoid. 



AMUSEMENTS. 397 

I find no language strong enough to condemn the 
selfishness of those who, in order that they may enjoy 
what is a pleasure to themselves, deliberately and 
knowingly inflict a corvee upon others. This objec- 
tion does not apply to paid service, for that is the 
result of a contract. Servants constantly endure the 
tedium of waiting and attendance, but it is their form 
of work, and they have freely undertaken it. Work 
of that kind is not a corvee, it is not forced labor. 
Eeal corvees are inflicted by heads of families on de- 
pendent relations, or by patrons on humble friends who 
are under some obligation to them, and so bound to 
them as to be defenceless. The father or patron wants, 
let us say, his nightly game at whist ; he must and will 
have it, if he cannot get it he feels that the machine 
of the universe is out of gear. He singles out three 
people who do not want to play, perhaps takes for his 
partner one who thoroughly dislikes the game, but who 
has learned something of it in obedience to his orders. 
They sit down to their board of green cloth. The time 
passes wearily for the principal victim, who is thinking 
of something else and makes mistakes. The patron 
loses his temper, speaks with increasing acerbity, and 
finally either flies into a passion and storms (the old- 
fashioned way) , or else adopts, with grim self-control, 
a tone of insulting contempt towards his victim that 
is even more difficult to endure. And this is the re- 
ward for having been unselfish and obliging, these are 
the thanks for having sacrificed a happy evening ! 

If this is often done by individuals armed with some 
kind of power and authority, it is done still more fre- 



398 AMUSEMENTS. 

quently by majorities. The tyranny of majorities begins 
in our school-days, and the principal happiness of man- 
hood is in some measure to escape from it. Many a 
man in after-life remembers with bitterness the weary 
hours he had to spend for the gratification of others in 
games that he disliked. The present writer has a vivid 
recollection of what, to him, was the infinite dulness of 
cricket. He was not by any means an inactive boy, 
but it so happened that cricket never had the slightest 
interest for him, and to this da} T he cannot pass a cricket- 
ground without a feeling of strong antipathy to its level 
surface of green, and of thankfulness that he is no 
longer compelled to go through the irksome old corvee 
of his youth. One of the many charms, to his taste, 
of a rocky mountain- side in the Highlands is that cricket 
is impossible there. At the same time he quite believes 
and admits everything that is so enthusiastically claimed 
for cricket by those who have a natural affinity for the 
game. 

There are not only sports and pastimes, but there is 
the long reverberating echo of every sport in endless 
conversations. Here it may be remarked that the 
lovers of a particular amusement, when they happen 
to be a majority , possess a terrible power of inflicting 
ennui upon others, and they often exercise it without 
mercy. Five men are dining together, and three are 
fox-hunters. Evidently they ought to keep fox-hunting 
to themselves in consideration for the other two, but 
this requires an almost superhuman self-discipline and 
politeness, so there is a risk that the minority may have 
to submit in silence to an inexhaustible series of details 



AMUSEMENTS. 399 

about horses and foxes and dogs. Indeed } t ou are never 
safe from this kind of conversation, even when you 
have numbers on your side. Sporting talk may be 
inflicted by a minority when that minority is incapable 
of any other conversation and strong in its own inca- 
pacity. Here is a case in point that was narrated to me 
by one of the three convives. The host was a country 
gentleman of great intellectual attainments, one guest 
was a famous Londoner, and the other was a sport- 
ing squire who had been invited as a neighbor. Fox- 
hunting was the only subject of talk, because the 
squire was garrulous and unable to converse about any 
other topic. 

Ladies are often pitiable sufferers from this kind of 
conversation. Sometimes the}^ have the instinct of 
masculine sport themselves, and then the subject has 
an interest for them ; but an intelligent woman may 
find herself in a wearisome position when she would 
rather avoid the subject of slaughter, and all the men 
around her talk of nothing but killing and wounding. 

It is natural that men should talk much about their 
amusements, because the mere recollection of a true 
amusement (that for which we have an affinity) is in 
itself a renewal of it in imagination, and an immense 
refreshment to the mind. In the midst of a gloomy 
English winter the yachtsman talks of summer seas, and 
whilst he is talking he watches, mentally, his well-set 
sails, and hears the wash of the Mediterranean wave. 

There are three pleasures in a true amusement, first 
anticipation, full of hope, which is 

" A feast for promised triumph yet to come," 



400 AMUSEMENTS. 

often the best banquet of all. Then comes the actual 
fruition, usually clashed with disappointments that a true 
lover of the sport accepts in the most cheerful spirit. 
Lastly, we go through it all over again, either with the 
friends who have shared our adventures or at least with 
those who could have enjoyed them had they been 
there, and who (for vanity often claims her own de- 
lights) know enough about the matter to appreciate 
our own admirable skill and courage. 

In concluding this Essay I desire to warn young 
readers against a very common mistake. It is very 
generally believed that literature and the fine arts can 
be happily practised as amusements. I believe this to 
be an error due to the vulgar notion that artists and 
literary people do not work but only display talent, as 
if anybody could displa}^ talent without toil. Literary 
and artistic pursuits are in fact studies and not amuse- 
ments. Too arduous to have the refreshing quality of 
recreation, they put too severe a strain upon the 
faculties, they are too troublesome in their processes, 
and too unsatisfactory in their results, unless a natural 
gift has been developed by earnest and long- continued 
labor. It does indeed occasionally happen that an 
artist who has acquired skill by persistent study will 
amuse himself by exercising it in sport. A painter may 
make idle sketches as Byron sometimes broke out into 
careless rhymes, or as a scholar will playfully compose 
doggerel in Greek, but these gambols of accomplished 
men are not to be confounded with the painful efforts of 
amateurs who fancy that thej^ are going to dance in the 
Palace of Art and shortly discover that the muse who 



AMUSEMENTS. 401 

presides there is not a smiling hostess but a severe and 
exigent schoolmistress. An able French painter, Louis 
Leloir, wrote thus to a friend about another art that he 
felt tempted to practise : — 

" Etching tempts me much. I am making experiments 
and hope to show you something soon. Unhappily life is too 
short ; we do a little of everything and then perceive that each 
branch of art would of itself consume the life of a man, to 
practise it very imperfectly after all. . . . We get angry with 
ourselves and struggle, but too late. It was at the beginning 
that we ought to have put on blinkers to hide from ourselves 
everything that is not art." 

If we mean to amuse ourselves let us avoid the pain- 
ful wrestling against insuperable difficulties, and the 
humiliation of imperfect results. Let us shun all osten- 
tation, either of wealth or talent, and take our pleasures 
happily like poor children, or like the idle angler who 
stands in his old clothes by the purling stream and 
watches the bobbing of his float, or the glancing of the 
fly that his guileful industry has made. 



26 



INDEX. 



Absinthe, French use, 273. 

Absurdity, in languages, 157. 

Academies, in a university, 275. 

Accidents, Divine connection with 
(Essay XV.), 218-222. 

Acquaintances: new and humble, 
21, 22; chance, 23-26; met in 
travelling (Essay XVII.), 239- 
252 passim. 

Adaptability: a mystery, 9; in 
life's journey, 44; to unrefined 
people, 72. 

Adultery, overlooked in princes, 
168. 

Affection: not blinding to faults, 
10; how to obtain filial, 98; in 
the beginning of letters, 316. 

Affinities, mysterious, 288. 

Age: affecting human intercourse, 
ix; outrun by youth, 86-93 pas- 
sim; affecting friendship, 112; 
senility hard to convince, 293, 
294; middle and old, 302; kind 
letter to an old lady, 345. 

Agnosticism, affecting filial rela- 
tions, 93. 

Agriculture: under law, 228; and 
Radicals, 282. 

Albany, Duke of, his associations, 5. 

Albert ISTvanza, Baker's exploits, 
392. 

Alexis, Prince, sad relations to his 
father, 95, 96. 

Alps: first sight, 235; grandeur, 
271. 

Americans : artistic attraction, 8 
inequalities of wealth, 218 ; be 
havior towards strangers, 249 
treated as ignorant by the Eng- 
lish, 277 ; under George III., 279 : 
use of ruled paper, 328. 

Amusements : pursuit of, 27 ; sym- 
pathy with youthful, 88 ; out- 
door, 302, 303; praise for Indul- 



gence not deserved, 342; in 
general (Essay XXVI.), 383-401; 
obligatory, 383; expensive and 
pleasurable, 384; laborious, 385; 
princely enjoyments, 386, 387; 
povertv not compelled to practise, 
388; feigned, 388, 389; converted 
into customs, 389; should be in- 
dependent in, 390 ; shooting, 391- 
393; boating, 394-396; selfish 
compulsion, 397; tyranny of 
majorities, 398 ; conversational 
echoes, 398, 399; ladies not in- 
terested. 399; three stages of 
pleasure, 399, 400; artistic gam- 
bols, 400; to be taken naturally 
and happily, 401. 

Analvsis : important to prevent con- 
fusion (Essay XX.), 280-2dipas- 
sim; analytical faculty wanting, 
280, 292-294. 

Ancestry : aristocratic, 123 ; boast, 
130 ; home, 138 ; less religion, 
214. 

Angels, and the arts, 191. 

Anglicanism, and Russian Church, 
257, 258. 

Angling, pleasure of, 401. 

Animals, feminine care, 177. 

Annuities, affecting familv ties, 68, 
69. 

Answers to letters, 334, 335. 

Anticipation, pleasure of, 399, 400. 

Antiquarianism, author's, 323. 

Apollo, a sportsman compared to, 
391. 

Arabs: use of telegraph, 323; col- 
lar-bone broken, 392. 

Archaeology: a friend's interest, x; 
affected by railway travel, 14. 

Architecture: illustration, vii, xii; 
studies in France, 17, 23, 24 ; con- 
nection with religion, 189, 190, 
192; ignorance about English, 



404 



INDEX, 



265; common mistakes, 291; let- 
ters about, 365. 

Aristocracy: French rural, 18, 19; 
English laws of primogeniture, 
66; English instance, 123, 124; 
discipline, 128; often poor, 135, 
136 ; effect of deference, 146, 147 ; 
a mark of ? 246, 247; Norman 
influence, 251, 252 ; antipathy, to 
Dissent, 256, 257; sent to Eton, 
277 ; and Bohemianism, 309 ; dis- 
like of scholarship, 331, 332. 
(See Rank.) 

Aristophilus, fictitious character, 
146. 

Armies: national ignorance, 277- 
279; monopoly of places in 
French, 283. (See War.) 

Art: detached from religion, xii ; 
affecting friendship, 6, 8 ; Claude 
and Turner, 13 ; chance acquaint- 
ances, 23, 24 ; purposes lowered, 
28, 29 ; penetrated by love, 42, 
43 ; affecting fraternity, 64 ; 
friendship, 113, 114 ; lifts above 
mercenary motives, 132; liter- 
ary, 154 ; adaptability of Greek 
language, 158 ; preferences of 
artists rewarded, 165 ; affecting 
relations of Priests and Women 
(Essay XIII. partn.), 187-195^as- 
sim ; exaggeration and diminu- 
tion, both admissible, 232, 233 ; 
result of selection, 253 ; French 
ignorance of English, 265, 266, 
267 ; antagonized by Philisti- 
nism, 285, 286, 301 ; not mere 
amusement, 400. (See Painting, 
Sculpture, Turner, etc.) 

Asceticism, tinges both the Philis- 
tine and Bohemian, 299, 300. 
(See Priesthood, Roman Catholi- 
cism, etc.) 

Association: pleasurable or not, 3 ; 
affected by opinions, 5, 6 ; by 
tastes, 7, 8 ; London, 20 ; of a 
certain French painter, 28 ; be- 
tween Priests and Women (Essay 
XIII. part in.), 195-204 passim; 
among travellers (Essay XVII.), 
239-252; leads to misapprehen- 
sion of opinions, 287, 288. (See 
Companionship, Friendship, So- 
ciety, etc.) 

Atavism, puzzling to parents, 88. 

Atheism : reading prayers, 163 ; 



apparent, 173; confounded with 
Deism, 257. (See God, Religion, 
etc.) 

Attention : how directed in the 
study of language, 154 ; want 
of, 197. 

Austerlitz, battle, 350. (See Napo- 
leon I.) 

Austria, Empress, 180. 

Authority, of fathers (Essay VI.), 
78-98 passim. (See Priests.) 

Authors : illustration, 9 ; indebted- 
ness to humbler classes, 22, 23 ; 
relations of several to women, 46 
et seq. ; sensitiveness to family 
indifference, 74 ; in society and 
with the pen, 237, 238; a pro- 
crastinating correspondent, 317; 
anonymous letters, 378. (See 
Hamerton, etc.) 

Authorship, illustrating interde- 
pendence, 12. (See Literature, 
etc.) 

Autobiographies, revelations of 
faithful family life, 65. 

Autumn tints, 233. 

Avignon, France, burial-place of 
Mill, 53. 

Bacheloks: independence, 26; 
dread of a wife's relations, 73; 
lonely hearth, 76 ; friendship de- 
stroyed by marriage, 115, 116; 
reception into society, 120; eat- 
ing-habits, 244. (See Marriage, 
Wives, etc.) 

Baker, Sir Samuel, shooting, 390- 
392. 

Balzac, his hatred of old maids, 
381. 

Baptism, religious influence, 184, 
185, (See Priesthood.) 

Baptists : in England, 170 ; igno- 
rance about, 257. (See Reli- 
gion.) 

Barbarism, emerging from, 161. 
(See Civilization.) 

Baronius, excerpts by Prince Alexis, 
95. 

Barristers, mercenary motives, 132, 
133. 

Bavaria, king of, 385-387. 

Bazaar, charit}', 188. 

Beard, not worn by priests, 202. 

Beauty: womanly attraction, 38, 
39; "'sought by wealth, 299. 






INDEX. 



405 



Bedford, Duke of, knowledge of 
French, 151. 

Belgium, letters written at the date 
of Waterloo, 153. 

Beljame, his knowledge of English, 
152. 

Bell, Umfrey, in old letter, 323. 

Benevolence, priestly and feminine 
association therein, 195, 196. 
(See Priests, etc.) 

Ben Nevis, and other Scotch heights, 
271. 

Bentinck, William, letters to, 344, 
345. 

Betham-Edwards, Amelia, her de- 
scription of English bad manners, 
240, 245. 

Bible : faith in, 6 ; allusion to Prov- 
erbs and Canticles, 41; reading, 
123 ; Babel, 159 ; commentaries 
studied, authority, 206 ; exam- 
ples, 208; narrow limits, 211, 
212; commentaries and sermons, 
302. (See Religion, etc.) 

Bicycle, illustration, 15. 

Birds, in France, 272. 

Birth, priestly connection with, 
184, 185. (See Priests, Women.) 

Black cap, illustration, 204. 

Blake, William, quotation about 
Folly and Wisdom, 31. 

Blasphemy, royal, 167. (See Im- 
morality, etc.) 

Boating : affected by railways, 14 • 
French river, 128 ; rich and poor, 
138, 139; comparison, 154; Le- 
ver's experience, 260; mistaken 
judgments, 292, 293 ; not enjoyed, 
302; sleeping, 307 ; on the 
Thames, 335 ; painting a boat, 
359; amusement, 394-396. (See 
Yachts, etc.) 

Boccaccio, quotation about pesti- 
lence, 222. 

Bohemianism: Noble (Essay XXL), 
295-314; unjust opinions, 295; 
lower forms, 296 ; social vices, 
297; sees the Aveakness of Philis- 
tinism, 298; how justifiable, 299; 
imagination and asceticism, 300; 
intimacy with nature, 302 ; esti- 
mate of the desirable, 303; living 
illustration, 304; furniture, men- 
tal and material, 305; an English 
Bohemian's enjoyment, 306 ; con- 
tempt for comfort, uselessness, 



307; self-sacrifice, 308; higher 
sort, 309 ; of Goldsmith, 309, 310 ; 
Corot, Wordsworth, 311 ; Palmer, 

312, 313 ; part of education, 

313, 314 ; a painter's, 314. (See 
Philistinism.) 

Bonaparte Family, criminality of, 
168. (See Napoleon I.) 

Books: how far an author's own, 
13; in hospitality, 142; refusal 
to read, 195 ; indifference to, 286, 
287; cheap and dear, 304, 305; 
Wordsworth's carelessness, 311; 
binding, 359. (See Literature, 
etc.) 

Bores, English dread of, 245. (See 
Intrusion.) 

Borrow, George, on English houses, 
145. 

Botany, allusion, 166. 

Bourbon Family, criminality of, 168. 

Bourrienne, Fauvelet de, 'Napole- 
on's secretary, 367. 

Boyton, Captain, swimming-appa- 
ratus, 290. 

Boys: French, 23, 24; English fra- 
ternal jealousies, 66; education, 
and differences with older peo- 
ple, 78-98 passim ,• roughened by 
play, 100; friendships, 111. (See 
Brothers, Fathers, Sons, etc.) 

Brassey, Sir Thomas, his yacht, 
138, 139. 

Brevity, in correspondence, 324- 
331, 361. 

Bright, John, his fraternity, 68. 

British Museum : ignorance about, 
266 ; library, 287 ; confused with 
other buildings, 291. (See Lon- 
don.) 

Bronte, Charlotte, her St. John, in 
Jane Eyre. 196. 

Brothers: divided by incompati- 
bility, 10; English divisions, 63; 
idiosyncrasy, 64; petty jealousy, 
65, 66; love"and hatred illustrated, 
67 ; the Brights, 68 ; money affairs, 
69; generosity and meanness, 70 ; 
refinement an obstacle, 71; lack 
of fraternal interest, 74; riches 
and poverty, 77. (See Boys, 
Friendship'), Sons, etc.) 

Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc de, 
his noble life, 209, 210. 

Buildings, literary illustration, vii. 

Bulgaria, lost to Turkey, 278. 



406 



INDEX. 



Bull-fights, women's presence, 180. 
(See Cruelty.) 

Bunyan, John: choice in religion, 
173; imprisoned, 181. 

Business: affecting family ties, 64, 
67; affecting letter-writing, 342, 
343 ; Letters of (Essay XXIV.), 354 
-369 ; orally conducted or written, 
354-357; stupid agents, 358, 359; 
talent for accuracy, 360 ; acknowl- 
edging orders, "361; apparent 
carelessness, one subject best, 362 ; 
knowledge of drawing important 
to explanations on paper, 363, 364; 
acquaintance with languages a 
help, 364; commercial slang, 365; 
indolence in letter-reading has 
disastrous results, 366-369. (See 
Correspondence.) 

Byron, Lord: on Friendship, 30; 
"Haidee, 39 ; marriage relations, 
46, 48-50, 55-57 ; as a letter-writer, 
345-349 ; careless rhymes, 400. 

Calumny: caused bv indistinct 
ideas, 292 ; in letters", 370-377. 

Cambridge University, 275, 276. 

Camden Society, publication, 318. 

Cannes, anecdote, 235. 

Cannon-balls, national intercourse, 
160. (See Wars.) 

Canoe, illustration, 15. 

Card-playing: incident, 128, 129; 
French habit, 273 ; kings, 289 ; 
laborious, 397. 

Carelessness, causing wrong judg- 
ments, 293. 

Caste: as affecting friendship, 4; 
not the uniting force, 9; French 
rites, 16 ; English prejudice, 19 ; 
sins against, 22; among authors, 
46-56 ; kinship of ideas, 57 ; ease 
with lower classes, 64; really 
existent, 124, 125; loss through 
poverty, 136 ; among English 
travellers, 240-242, 245, 246. 
(See Classes, Rank, Titles, etc.) 

Cat, drawing by a child, 364. 

Cathedrals: drawing a French, 23, 
24; imposing, 189, 190, 192. 

Celibacy: Shelley's experience, 34; 
in Catholic Church, 120; clerical, 
198-201; of old maids, 379-382. 
(See Clergy, Priests, Wives, etc.) 

Censure, dangerous in letters, 352, 
353. 



Ceremony: dependent on prosper- 
ity, 125, 126 ; fondness of women 
for, 197, 198; also lS7-lQ5_passim. 
(See Manners, Rank, etc.) 

Chamberlain, the title, 137. 

Chambord, Count de, restoration 
possible, 254, 255. 

Channel, British, illustration, 14. 

Charles II., women's influence dur- 
ing his reign, 181. 

Charles XII., his hardiness, 308. 

Chaucer, Geoffre}-, on birds, 272. 

Cheltenham, Eng., treatment of 
Dissenters, 19. 

Chemistry, illustration, 3. 

Cheshire, Eng., a case of generos- 
ity, 68. 

Children : recrimination with par- 
ents, 75 ; as affecting parental 
wealth, 119; social reception, 120; 
keenly alive to social distinc- 
tions, 121 ; imprudent marriages, 
123; a poor woman's, 139; inter- 
ruptions, 140, 141; ignorance of 
foreign language makes us seem 
like, 151 ; feminine cave, 177; of 
clergy, 200, 201; cat picture, 364 ; 
pleasures of poor, 401. (See Boys, 
Brothers, Marriage, Sons, etc.) 

Chinese mandarins, 130. 

Chirography, in letters, 331-333. 

Christ: his divinity a past issue, 6; 
Church instituted, 178, 179; Dr. 
Macleod on, 186 ; limits of knowl- 
edge in Jesus' day, 213. (See 
Church, Religion, etc.) 

Christianity: as affecting inter- 
course, 5, 6 ; its early disciples, 
142; preferment for adherence, 
162, 163 ; morality a part of, 168, 
169; state churches, 170; in poe- 
try, 198; early ideal, 206. (See 
Roman Catholicism, etc.) 

Christmas: decorations, 188; in 
Tennyson, 198. (See Clergy, 
Priesthood, Women.) 

Church: attendance of hypocrites, 
163; compulsory, 172 ; instituted 
by God in Christ, 178, 179; in- 
fluence at all stages of life, 183- 
186 ; aesthetic industry, 188 ; 
dress, 189; buildings, 190; men- 
aces, 193 ; partisanship, 194 ; 
power of custom, 198; author- 
ity, 203. (See Religion, Roman 
Catholicism, etc.) 



INDEX. 



407 



Church of England: as affecting 
friendship, 6; freedom of mem- 
bers in their own country, in- 
stance of Dissenting tyranny, 
164 ; dangers of forsaking, 165; 
bondage of royalty, 166, 168; 
adherence of nobilitv, 169, 170, 
173; of working-people, 170, 171; 
compulsory attendance, liberal- 
ity, 172, 173 ; ribaldry sanctioned 
by its head, 181 ; priestly consola- 
tion, 183; the legal church, 185; 
ritualistic art, 188-190 ; a bishop's 
invitation to a discussion, 192; 
story of a bishop's indolence, 
366, 367; French ignorance of, 
275. (See England, Christ, etc.) 

Cipher, in letters, 326. 

Civility. (See Hosjntality.) 

Civilization: liking for, xiii; an- 
tagonism to nature; in love-mat- 
ters, 41 ; lower state, 72 ; affected 
by hospitality, 1 00 ; material ad- 
juncts, 253; physical, 298; duty 
to further, 299; forsaken, 310. 
(See Barbarism, Bohemianism, 
Philistinism, etc.) 

Classes : Differences of Rank (Es- 
say X.), 130-147 passim; affected 
by religion (Essay XII.), 161- 
174; limits, 250; in connection 
with Gentility (Essay XVIII.), 
25S-2Q3 passim. (See Caste, Cer- 
emonies, Hank, etc.) 

Classics, study of, in the Renais- 
sance, 212. 

Claude, helps Turner. (See Paint- 
ers, etc.) 

Clergy: mercenary motives, 132, 
133; more tolerant of immorality 
than of heresy, 168; belief in 
natural law, 221; dangers of as- 
sociation with, 287. (See Priest- 
hood, Religion, etc.) 

Clergywomen, 200, 201. 

Clerks, their knowledge an aid to 
national intercourse, 149, 150. 
(See Business, Languages, etc.) 

Coats-of-arms : usurped, 135; in 
letters, 326, 327. (See Rank.) 

Cockburn, Sir Alexander, knowl- 
edge of French, 151. 

Cock Robin, boat, 138. (See Boat- 
ing.) 

Coffee, satire on trade. 133, 134. 

Cologne Cathedral, 190. 



Colors, in painting, 232, 233. 

Columbus, Voltaire's allusion, 274. 

Comet, in Egyptian war, 229. 
(See Superstition.) 

Comfort, pursuit of, 27, 298, 299. 
(See Philistinism.) 

Commerce, affected by language, 
148-150, 159, 160. (See Busi- 
ness, Languages, etc.) 

Communism, threats, 377. 

Como, Italy, solitude, 31. 

Companionship: how decided, 4; 
affected by opinions, 5, 6; by 
tastes, 7, 8; in London, 20; with 
the lower classes, 21-23 ; chance, 
24-26; intellectual exclusiveness, 
27, 28; books, 29; nature, 30; 
in Marriage (Essay IV.), 44-62; 
travelling, absence, 44; intellect- 
ual, 45; instances of unlawful, 
46, 47 ; failures not surprising, 
48; of Byron, 49, 50; Goethe, 51, 
52; Mill, 53, 54; discouraging 
examples, 55, 56; difficulties of 
extraordinary minds, 57; arti- 
ficial, 58; hopelessness of finding 
ideal associations, 59; indications 
and realizations, 60 ; trust, 61, 
62; hindered by refinement, 71, 
72; affected by cousinship, 73; 
parents and children (Essay VI.), 
78-98 passim ; Death of Friend- 
ship (Essay VIII.), 110-118; 
affected bv wealth and pover- 
ty (Essays"lX. and X.), 119-147 
2>assim ; between Priests and 
Women (Essay XIII.), 175-204. 
(See Association, Friendship, etc.) 

Comradeship, difficult between par- 
ents and children, 89. (See As- 
sociation, etc.) 

Concession : weakening the mind, 
147; national, 148; feminine lik- 
ing, 175. 

Confessional, the: influencing wo- 
men, 201-203; a supposititious 
compulsion, 281. (See Religion, 
etc ) 

Confirmation, priestly connection 
with, 185. (See Women.) 

Confusion: (Essay XX.), 280-294; 
masculine and feminine, 280; po- 
litical, 280-284; rebels and re- 
formers, 280; private and public 
liberty, 281; Radicals, 282; ega- 
lite, 283 ; religious, 284, 285 ; Phi- 



408 



INDEX. 



listines and Bohemians, 285-287; 
confounding people with their as- 
sociates, 287, 288 ; vocations, 288, 
289 ; persons, 290 ; foreign build- 
ings, 291 ; inducing calumny, 
292 ; caused by insufficient analy- 
sis, 292, 293; about inventions, 
293; result of carelessness, indo- 
lence, or senility, 293, 294. 

Consolation, of clergy, 179-183. 
(See Religion.) 

Construing, different from reading, 
154. (See Languages.) 

Continent, the: family ties, 63; 
friendship broken by marriage, 
116 ; religious liberality, 173; 
marriage, 184 ; flowers, 188, 189 ; 
confessional, 202, 203 ; exagger- 
ation, 234, 235 ; table-manners of 
travellers, 240-252 passim ; drink- 
ing-places, 262. (See France, etc.) 

Controversy", disliked, xiii. 

Conventionality: affecting person- 
alitv, 15-17 ; genteel ignorance 
engendered by, 260-262. (See 
Courtesy, Manners, etc.) 

Conversation : chance, 26 ; com- 
pared with literature, 29 ; study 
of languages, 156 : at table d'hote, 
239-249 ; among strangers, 247- 
252 passim ; useless to quote, 291 ; 
Goldsmith's enjoyment, 309. 

Convictions, our own to be trusted, 
iii, iv. 

Copenhagen, battle, 327. 

Cornhill "Magazine, Lever's article, 
259, 260. 

Corot (Jean Baptiste Camille), his 
Bohemianism, 310, 311. 

Correspondence : akin to periodi- 
cals, 30 ; Belgian letters, 153 ; 
Courtesy of Epistolary Communi- 
cation (Essay XXIL), 315-335 ; 
introductions and number of let- 
ters, 316 ; promptness, 317, 318 ; 
Plumpton Letters, 318-323 : brev- 
ity, 324 ; telegraphy and abbre- 
viations, 325 ; sealing, 326, 327 ; 
peculiar stationery, 328 ; post- 
cards, 329 ; un mot a la paste, 
330 ; brevity and hurry, 331 ; 
handwriting, 332 ; crossed lines, 
ink, type-writers, 333 ; dictation, 
outside courtesy, 334 ; to reply or 
not reply V 335; Letters of Friend- 
ship (Essay XXIII. ), 336-353 ; a 



supposed gain to friendship, 336 ; 
neglected, 337 ; impediments, 338; 
French cards, 339 ; abandonment 
to be regretted, 340: letter-writing 
a gift, 341 ; real self wanted in 
letters, 342 ; letters of business 
and friendship, 343 ; familiarity 
best, 344 ; lengthy letters, 345; 
Byron's, 346-348 ; "Jacquemont's, 
349 ; the Kemusat letters, 350 ; 
Bernardo Tasso's, Montaigne's, 
350 ; perils of plain speaking, 352, 
353 ; Letters of Business (Essay 
XXIV.), 354-369 ; differences of 
talent, 354 ; repeated perusals, 
355 ; refuge of timidity, 356 ; 
letters exposed, literary faults, 
omissions, 357 ; directions misun- 
derstood, 358, 359 ; acknowledg- 
ing orders, 361; slovenly writing, 
one subject in each letter, 362 ; 
misunderstanding through igno- 
rance, 363 ; in foreign languages, 
364 ; conventional slang, 365 ; 
careful reading necessary, 366 ; 
unopened letters, 367 ; epistles 
half-read, 3G8 ; a stupid error, 
369 ; Anonvmous Letters (Essav 
XXV.), 370-382; common, 370*; 
slanderous, 371 ; vehicle of cal- 
umny, 372 ; written to betrothed 
lovers, 373 ; story, 374 ; written 
in collaboration and with pains, 

375 ; an expected grandchild, 

376 ; torture and threats, 377 ; 
kindly and critical, 378-382. 

Corvee: allusion, 342 ; definition, 
389, 390, 396, 397. (See Amuse- 
ments.) 

Cottage, love in a, 35, 36. 

Court-circulars, 166, 167. 

Courtesy: its forms, 127-129 ; id- 
ioms, 157; in Epistolary Commu- 
nication (Essay XXIL), 315-335; 
in what courtesy consists, 315 ; 
the act of writing, phrases, 316 ; 
promptitude, 317 ; instance of 
procrastination, 317, 318 ; illus- 
trations, in the Plumpton Corre- 
spondence, of ancient courtesy, 
318-323, 331 ; consists in modern 
brevity, 324 ; foreign forms, 325; 
bv telegraph, 326 ; in little things, 
327; in stationery, 328: affected 
bv postal cards," 329, 330 ; in 
chirography, 331, 332 ; affected 



INDEX. 



409 



by type-writers, 333 ; for show 
merely, 334 ; requiring answers, 
335. (See Manners, Classes, etc.) 

Cousins : French proverb, general 
relationship, 72 ; lack of friendly 
interest, 74. (See Brothers, etc.) 

Creuzot, French foundry, 272. 

Cricket : not played in France, 272; 
author's dislike, 398. (See Amuse- 
ments.) 

Crimean War, caused by ignorance, 
278. (See War.) 

Criticism : intolerant of certain feat- 
ures in books, 89 ; in Byron's 
letters, 347; in anonymous letters, 
379; explained by a date, 381. 

Cromwell, Oliver, contrasted with 
his son, 96. 

Culture and Philistinism, 285-287. 

Customs : upheld by clergy, 197, 
198 ; amusements changed into, 
383, 384, 389. (See Ceremonies, 
Courtesy, Rank, etc.) 

Daily News, London, illustration 
of natural law vs. religion, xii. 

Dancing : French quotation about, 
31 ; religious aversion, 123 ; not 
compulsory to the poor, 388. (See 
Amusements, etc.) 

Dante, his subjects, 192. 

Daughters, their respectful and im- 
pertinent letters, 319-321. (See 
lathers, S*>ns, Women, etc.) 

Death: termination of intercourse, 
x, xi; from love, 39; Byron's 
lines, 50; ingratitude expressed 
in a will, 69; of wife's relations, 
73; of Friendship (Essay VIII.), 
110-118; not personal, 110; of 
a French gentleman, 182; priestly 
connection with, 184-186, 203; 
of absent friends, 338; French 
customs, 339 ; silence, 340 
{See Priests, Religion.) 

Debauchery, destructive of love, 34. 

Deference, why liked, 122. (See 
Rank, etc.) 

Deism, confounded with Atheism, 
257. (See God, Religion, etc.) 

Delos, oracle of, 229. 

Democracies, illustration of broken 
friendships, 114, 115. 

Democracy: accusation of, 131; 
confounded with Dissent, 257. 
(See Nationality, etc.) 



Denmark, the crown-prince of, 327. 

Dependence, of one upon all, 12. 

De Saussure, Horace Benedict, his 
life study, 230, 231. 

Despotism, provincial and social, 
17. (See Tyranny.) 

De Tocqueville, Alexis Charles 
Henri Clerel: allusion, 147 ; 
translation, 152; on English 
unsociability (Essay XVII.), 239- 
252 passim. 

Devil: priestly opposition, 195; 
belief in agency, 224 ; God's 
relatioi to, "228." (See Clergy, 
Superstition, Religion, etc.) 

Devonshire, Eng., its beauty, 270. 

Dickens, Charles : his middle-class 
portraitures, 20 ; his indebtedness 
to the poor, 22; humor, 72. 

Dictionary, references, 155. (See 
Languages.) 

Diderot, Denis, Goldsmith's inter- 
view, 309. 

Dignify, to be maintained in middle- 
life, 117. 

Diminution, habit in art and life 
(Essay XVI.), 232-238. (See 
Exaggeration.) 

Diogenes, his philosophy, 127. 

Discipline: of children," 78-98 pas- 
sim; delegated, 83; mental, 208; 
of self, 308. 

Discord, the result of high taste, 6. 

Dishonesty, part of Bohemianism, 
296. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, female esti- 
mate, 380. 

Dissenters : French estimate, 18, 19 ; 
English exclusion, 19, 256; lib- 
erty in religion, 164, 165; posi- 
tion not compulsory, 170; small 
towns, 171-173. (See Church of 
England, etc.) 

Dissipation: among working-men, 
124: in France, 272, 273. (See 
Wine, etc.) 

Distinctions forgotten (Essay XX.), 
280-294 passi m. (See Confusion.) 

Divorce, causes of, 38. (See Mar- 
riage, Women, etc.) 

Dobell, Sidnev, social exclusion, 
19. 

Dog, rifle compared to, 392. (See 
Amusements.) 

Dominicans, dress, 189. (See Re- 
ligion, etc.) 



410 



INDEX. 



Dominoes in France, 273. (See 
Amusements.) 

Don Quixote, illustration of pater- 
nal satire, 97. 

Dore\ Gustave, his kind and long 
letter, 345. 

Double, Leopold, home, 142. 

Dover Straits, 337. 

Drama: power of adaptation, 72; 
amateur actors, 143. 

Drawing: a French church, 23, 24; 
aid to business letters, 363, 364. 
(See Painters, etc.) 

Dreams, outgrown, 60. 

Dress : connection with manners, 
126, 127; ornaments to indicate 
wealth, 131; feminine interest, 
187; clerical vestments, 187, 
188, 198; sexless, 202, 203; of 
the Philistines, 207, 298; Bohe- 
mian, 304-307, 313, 314. (See 
Women.) 

Driving, sole exercise, 302. 

Drunkenness: part of Bohemian- 
ism, 296; in best society, 297. 
(See Table, Wine, etc.) 

Duelling, French, 273. 

Du Maurier, George, his satire on 
coffee-dealers, 133, 134. 

Dupont. Pierre, song about wine, 
268, 269, 272. 

Ear, learning languages by, 156. 
(See Languages.) 

Easter: allusion, 198; confession, 
281. 

Eccentricity : high intellect, 56 ; in 
an artist, 307 ; claims indul- 
gence, 387. 

Eclipse, superstitious view, 215-217, 
229. 

Economy, necessitated bv marriage, 
26. (See Wealth.) 

Edinburgh Review, editor, 152. 

Editor, a procrastinating corre- 
spondent, 317. 

Education: similarity, 10; affect- 
ing idiosyncrasy, 13 ; conven- 
tional, 15 ; effect upon humor, 
20 ; literary, derived from the 
poor, 22; affected bv change in 
filial obedience, 80-88; home, 81 
et seq. ; authority of teachers, 81, 
83 ; divergence of parental and 
filial, 84; special efforts, 85; di- 
vergent, 90-92 ; profound lack of, 



91 ; never to be thrown off, 92 ; of 
hospitality, 99, 100 ; the effect on 
all religion (Essay XV.), 215-231 
passim ; knowledge of languages, 
245; of Tasso family, 350, 351. 
(See Languages, etc.) 

Egypt: Suez Canal, xii ; illustra- 
tion of school tasks, 85; war of 
1882, 222-224, 229. 

Eliot, George : hints from the poor, 
22; her peculiar relation to Mr. 
Lewes, 45, 46, 55, 56; often con- 
founded with other writers, 290. 

Elizabeth, Queen: order about the 
marriage of clergv, 200 ; her 

. times, 381. (See Celibacy.) 

Emerson, Ralph "Waldo : the dedi- 
cation, iii, iv ; anecdote of Na- 
poleon, 367. 

England: newspaper reports, 41; a 
French woman's knowledge of, 
107 ; respect for rank, 136 ; title- 
worship, 137 ; estimate of wealth, 
144-146 ; slavery to houses, 145 ; 
French ideas slowly received, 
150; religious freedom, 164-168, 
172 ; two religions for the nobil- 
ity, 169, 170, 173 ; a most relent- 
less monarch, 180 : women dur- 
ing reign of Charles II., 181 ; mar- 
riage rites. 184,185; aristocracj r , 
246: A Remarkable Peculiarity 
(Essay XVII.), 239-252; meeting 
abroad, 239 ; reticence in each 
other's company, 240; anecdotes, 
241, 242; dread of intrusion, 
243, 244; freedom with foreign- 
ers and with compatriots, 245; 
not a mark of aristocracy, 246; 
fear of meddlers, 247; interest 
in rank, 248 ; reticence outgrown, 
249; Lever's illustration, 250; 
exceptions, 251 ; Saxon and Nor- 
man influence, 251, 252 ; Dissent- 
ers ignored, 256, 257; general 
information, 263 ; French igno- 
rance of art and literature in, 
265-267, 269; game, 268; moun- 
tains, 270, 271; landscapes, 270; 
Church, 275 ; supposed law about 
attending the Mass, 281 ; homes 
longed for, 286 ; the architectural 
blunders of tourists, 291 ; Philis- 
tine laclv, 304; painter and Phi- 
listine, 306 ; letters in the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries, 318-321; 



INDEX. 



411 



use of telegraph, 323 ; letters short- 
ened, 325 ; letter-paper 328 ; post- 
cards, 329, 330; communication 
with France, 337 ; trade habits, 
361, 365; reading of certain books 
not compulsory, 378; old maids, 
381; winter, 399. (See Church 
of England, France, etc.) 

English' Language: ignorance of, 
a misfortune, 149, 150; familiar 
knowledge unusual in France, 
151-153 ; forms of courtesy, 157 ; 
conversation abroad, 240 ; Bohe- 
mian, 295 ; literature, 305 ; bad 
spelling, 360, 361; no synonym 
for corvee, 389; nautical terms, 
396. (See England, etc.) 

English People: Continental repul- 
sion, 7 ; artistic attraction, 8 ; 
undervaluation of chance conver- 
sations, 26 ; looseness of family 
ties, 63; ashamed of sentiment, 
82; feeling about heredity, 93; 
one lady's empty rooms, 104; 
another's incivility, 106; a mer- 
chant's loss of wealth, 121, 122 ; 
deteriorated aristocrat, 123; let- 
ters by ladies, 153 ; no consoling 
power, 182; gentlewomen of for- 
mer generation, 205, 206; where 
to find inspiriting models, 208; 
companions of Prince Imperial, 
225 ; understatement a habit, 
234-238; a lady's ignorant re- 
mark about servants, 258, 259; 
ignorance of French mountains, 
etc., 270-271; fuel and iron, 272; 
universities, 275, 276; patron- 
age of Americans, 277; anony- 
mous letter to a gentleman, 376. 

Ennui: banished by labor, 32; on 
shipboard, 396. 

Enterprise, affecting individualism, 
14. 

Envy, expressed in anonymous 
letters, 371. 

Epiphany, annual Egyptian cere- 
mony, xii. (See Science, Su- 
perstition, etc.) 

Epithets, English, 235. 

Equalitv : affecting intercourse, 246 ; 
egallte, 282, 283. (See Rank, 
Ignorance.) 

Equestrianism, affected by rail- 
ways, 14. 

Etching, Leloir's fondness for, 401. 



Etheredge, Sir George, his ribaldry, 
181. 

Eton College, allusion,, 277. 

Eugenie, Empress : her influence 
over her husband, 176; his re- 
gard, 225. 

Europe: vintages, 133; influence 
of Littre, 210; Southern, 240; 
allusion, 254 ; Turkey nearly ex- 
pelled, 278; latest thought, 306; 
cities, 309; William of Orange, 
on complications, 344; commu- 
nistic disturbances, 377. (See 
England, France, etc.) 

Evangelicism, English peculiarities, 
123. (See Dissenters, etc.) 

Evans, Marian. (See George Eliot.) 

Evolution, theory of, 176. 

Exaggeration, the habit in art and 
life (Essay XVI.), 232-238. (See 
Diminution.) 

Exercise: love of, 14; in the young 
and the old, 86, 87. (See Amuse- 
ments.) 

Experience : value, 30 ; needed to 
avoid dangers in letter-writing, 
352. 

Extravagance: part of Bohemian- 
ism, 295 ; Goldsmith's, 310. 

Family: Ties (Essay V.), 63-77; 
looseness in England, 63; broth- 
erly coolness, 64; domestic jeal- 
ousies, 65 ; laws of primogeniture, 
66; instances of strong attach- 
ment, 67; illustrations of kind- 
ness, 68 ; pecuniary relations, 69 ; 
parsimony, 70; discomfort of re- 
finement, 71 ; cousins, 72; wife's 
relations, 73; indifference to the 
achievements of kindred, 74; aid 
from relatives, domestic rudeness, 
75; brutality, misery, 76; home 
privations, 77 ; Fathers and Sons 
(Essay VI.), 78-98; intercourse, 
to be distinguished from individ- 
ual, 119, 120; rich friends, 121; 
false, 122; children's marriages, 
123; old, 135, 136; clerical, 199, 
200; subjects of letters, 205; re- 
gard of Napoleon III., 225. (See 
Brothers, Sons, etc.) 

Fashion, transient, 307. 

Fathers: separated from children 
by incompatibility, 10; by irasci- 
bility, 75 ; by brutality of tongue, 



412 



INDEX. 



76; and Sons (Essay VI.), 78-98; 
unsatisfactory relation, interreg- 
num, 78; old. and new feelings 
and customs, 79; commanding, 
80; exercise of authority, 81; 
Mill's experience, 82; abdication 
of authority, 83; personal edu- 
cation of sons, 84, 85 ; mistakes 
of middle-age, 86 ; outstripped 
by sons, 87; intimate friendship 
impossible, 88 ; differences of age, 
89; divergences of education and 
experience, 90, 91; opinions not 
hereditary. 92, 93; the attempted 
control of marriage, 94 ; Peter the 
Great and Alexis, 95 ; other illus- 
trations of discord, 96 ; satire and 
disregard of personality, 97 ; true 
foundation of paternal associa- 
tion, 98; death of a French par- 
ent, 182; a letter, 319-322. 

Favor, fear of loss, 147. 

Ferdinand and Isabella, religious 
freedom in their reign, 164. 

Fiction: love in French. 41; absorb- 
ing theme, 42; in a library, 305. 

Fletcher, Thomas, firearms made 
by, 391, 392. 

Florence, Italy, pestilence, 222. 

Flowers: illustration, 179; church 
use, 188; Flower Sunday, 189. 
(See Women, etc.) 

Fly, artificial, 377. 

Fog, English, 270. 

Foreigners: associations with, 7; 
view of English family life. 63; 
in travelling-conditions (Essay 
XYII.), 239-252 passim; associa- 
tion leads to misapprehension, 
287: in England. 291. 

Fox-hunting. 180, 398, 399. (See 
Amusements. Sports, etc.) 

France: a peasant's outlook, xii; 
social despotism in small cities, 
17-19 ; pleasant associations in a 
cathedral city, 23, 24; political 
criticism, 115; noisy card-plav- 
ers, 128, 129 ; disregard of titles, 
136, 137 ; adage about riches, 
145; English ideas slowly re- 
ceived, travel in Southern, 150; 
religious freedom, 165 ; marriage, 
184; railway accident, 218-220; 
the Imperialists, 225; feudal fash- 
ions, 246; obstinacy of the old 
regime, 254-256; mountains, 271; 



vigor of young men, 272, 273; 
universities, 275, 276: equality 
attained by Revolution, 283; 
bourgeois complaint of news- 
papers, 286; mineral oil, 288; 
confusion of tourists, 291 ; Gold- 
smith's travels, 309, 310; land- 
scape painter, 310 ; end of Plump- 
ton family, 323 ; use of telegraph, 
323; letters shortened, 325; let- 
ter-paper, 328; post-cards, 330; 
chirography, 332; New Year's 
cards, 339; carton non bitume. 
358, 359; habits of tradesmen, 
360,361,365; the Salon, 367; old 
maids, 381; a corvee, 389, 390; 
Leloir the painter, 401. (See 
Continent, etc.) 

Fraternity, fraternite, 282, 283. 
(See Brothers.) 

Freedom : national, 279 ; public and 
private liberty confounded, 281, 
282. 

French Language : teaching, 85 ; 
ignorance a misfortune, 149, 150; 
rare knowledge of, by English- 
men, 151, 152; letters by Eng- 
lish ladies, 153 ; forms of courtesy, 
157; prayers, 158; as the uni- 
versal tongue, 158, 159; English 
knowledge of, 245; univers, 273, 
274. (See Lanyuaqes.) 

French People : excellence in paint- 
ing, and relations to Americans 
and English, 7 ; an ideal of good 
form, 15 ; old conventionality, 
16-18; love in fiction, 41; family 
ties, 63; proverb about cousins, 
72; unbelieving sons, 93; bour- 
geois table manners formerly, 
101, 102; state apartments, 105; 
incivility towards, at an English 
table, 106; girls, 106 ; a woman's 
clever retort, 107; literature con- 
demned by wholesale, 147; royal 
daily life, 167; power of conso- 
lation, 182; examples of virtue, 
208; old nobility, 209; Buffon 
and Littre, 209-211; hazard pro- 
videntiel, 227; painters, 232, 233; 
overstatement, 234, 235; socia- 
bility with strangers contrasted 
with the English want of it (Es- 
say XYII.), 239-252 jJassim ; a 
widow and suite, 242, 243; dis- 
creet social habits, 247, 248; a 



INDEX. 



413 



disregard of titles, 248 ; a weak 
question about fortune, 259; ig- 
norance of English matters, 265- 
-270; wine-song, 268, 269; fuel 
and iron, 271, 272 ; seeming van- 
ity of language, 273, 274; con- 
ceit cured by war, 278 ; commun- 
ist dreamers, 284; proverb, 287; 
confusion of persons, 290. 

Friendship : supposed impossible in 
a given case, viii, ix; real, x; 
how formed, 4; not confined to 
the same class, 5; affected by 
art and religion, 6 ; by taste and 
nationality, 7, 8 ; by likeness, 
8; with those with whom we 
have not much in common, 9, 10 ; 
affected by incompatibility, 10; 
Byron's comparison, 30; affect- 
ing illicit love, 41 ; akin to mar- 
riage, 48; elective affinity, 75; 
Death of (Essay VIII.), 110-118 ; 
sad subject, no resurrection, de- 
finition, 110; boyish alliances, 
growth, 111; personal changes, 
112; differences of opinion, 113; 
of prosperity, financial, profes- 
sional, political, 114; habits, mar- 
riage, 115 ; neglect, poor and rich, 
116; equality not essential, ac- 
ceptance of kindness, new ties, 
117; intimacy easily destroyed, 
118; affected by wealth (Essavs 
IX., X.), 119-147 passim; by 
language, 149; between Priests 
and Women (Essay XIII.), 175- 
204 passim ; formed with stran- 
gers, 251; leads to misunderstood 
opinions, 287, 288: disturbed by 
procrastination, 317; Letters of, 
(Essay XXIIL), 336-353; infre- 
quency, 336; obstacles, 337; the 
sea a barrier, 338 ; aid of a few 
words at New Year's, 339 ; death 
like silence, 340 ; charm of man- 
ner not always carried into letters, 
341; excluded by business, 342; 
cooled by reproaches, 343; all 
topics interesting to a friend, 
344; affection overflows in long 
letters, 345-351 ; fault-finding 
dangerous, 352, 353 ; journeys 
saved, 360. (See Association, 
Companionship, Family, etc.) 

Fruit, ignorance about English, 
269, 270. 



Fruition, pleasure of, 400. 

Fuel, French, 272. 

Furniture: feminine intei'est in, 
187 ; regard and disregard (Essay 
XXI.), 295-314 passim; Gold- 
smith's extravagance, 310. (See 
Women.) 

Gambetta, his death, 225. 

Game: in England, 267, 268, 270; 
elephant and hippopotamus, 392. 
(See Sports.) 

Games, connection with amusement, 
385, 397. (See Cards, etc.) 

Garden, illustration, 9. 

Gascoyne, William, letters, 318, 319. 

Generosity : affecting family ties, 
69, 70 ; of a Philistine, 301. 

Geneva Lake, as seen by different 
eyes, 230, 231. 

Genius, enjoyment of, 303. 

Gentility : Genteel Ignorance (Es- 
say XVIII. ), 253-263 ; an ideal 
condition, 253 ; misfortune, 254; 
French noblesse, 255 ; ignores 
differing forms of religion, 256, 
257 ; poverty, 258 : inferior finan- 
cial conditions, 259, 260 ; real dif- 
ferences, 261 ; genteel society 
avoided, 262 ; because stupid, 
263. 

Geography : London Atlas, 274 ; 
work of Reclus, 291. (See Igno- 
rance.) 

Geology, allusion, 166. (See Sci- 
ence.) 

George III., colonial tenure, 279. 

Germany : models of virtue, 208 ; 
hotel fashions, 244 ; a Bohemian 
and scholar, 304-300. 

German Language, English knowl- 
edge, 245. 

Gladstone, William E. : the probable 
effect of a French training, 17, 18 ; 
indebtedness to trade, 135 ; Lord, 
137 ; foreign troubles ending in 
inkshed, 150 ; allusion, 241 ; use 
of post-cards, 335 ; female esti- 
mate, 380. 

Glasgow, steamer experience, 25. 

Gloucester, Eng., manufactory of 
rifles, 391, 392. 

God : of the future, 177 ; personal 
care, 178, 179 ; against wicked- 
ness, 180; Divine love, 178-181, 
186, 187 ; interference with law 



414 



INDEX. 



(Essay XV.), 215-231 passim; 
human motives, 228. (See Reli- 
gion, etc.) 

Gods : our valors the best, 177 ; 
siege of Syracuse, 215-217. (See 
Superstition.) 

Godwin, Mary, relations to Shelley, 
46-48. 

Goethe: Faust's Margaret, 39 ; re- 
lation to women, 46, 50, 56, 57 ; 
Life, 244. 

Gold: in embroidery to indicate 
wealth, 131 ; color,*' 232, 233. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, his Bohemian- 
ism, 309, 310. 

Gormandizing, 103. (See Table.) 

Government : feminine, 176 ; scien- 
tific, 229. 

Grammar: French knowledge of, 
.152 ; rival of literature, 154 ; in 
correspondence, 356, 357. (See 
Languages, etc.) 

Gratitude : a sister's want of, 69 ; 
hospitality not reciprocated, 122. 

Greece : Bvron's enthusiasm, 50, 
57 ; story of Nikias, 215-217 ; 
advance of knowledge, 230 ; By- 
ron's notice of a book, 348. 

Greek Church : Czar's headship, 
168 ; the only true, 258. (See 
Church of England, etc.) 

Greek Language : teaching, 84 ; fit- 
ness as the universal language, 
158, 159 ; in the Renaissance, 
212 ; professorship and library, 
287 ; doggerel, 400. (See Lan- 
guages.) 

Groom, true happiness in a stable, 
343. 

Guests : Rights of (Essay VI L), 
99-109 ; respect, exclusiveness, 
99 ; two views, 100 ; conformity 
insisted upon, 101 ; left to choose 
for himself, 102 ; duties towards 
a host, generous entertainment, 

103 ; parsimonious treatment, 

104 ; illustrations, ideas to be 
respected, 105 ; nationality also, 

107 ; a host the ally of his guests, 
307; discourtesy towards a host, 

108 ; illustration, 109 ; among rich 
and poor, 140-144. 

Guiccioli, Countess, her relations to 

Byron, 49, 50. 
Guillotine, Byron's description, 347. 
Gulliver's Travels, allusion, 261. 



Gymnastics : by young French- 
men, 272; aristocratic monopoly, 
283. (See Amusements, etc.) 

Habits : in language, 157 ; French 
discretion, 247, 248. 

Hamerton, Philip Gilbert: indebted- 
ness to Emerson, iii, iv ; plan of 
the book, vii-ix ; omissions, ix ; 
the pleasures of friendship, x ; on 
death, x, xi; a liking for civili- 
zation and all its amenities, xii; 
thoughts in French travel, 17 et 
seq. ; pleasant experience in study- 
ing French architecture, 23, 24 ; 
conversation in Scotland, 24, 25 ; 
in a steamer, 25, 26 ; acquaintance 
with a painter, 28 ; belief in Na- 
ture's promises, 60 et seq. ; what 
a sister said, 65; the love of two 
brothers, 67 ; delightful experi- 
ence with wife's relations, 73 ; 
experience of hospitable tyranny, 
100 et seq.; Parisian dinner, 107; 
experience with friendship, 113 ; 
noisy French farmers, 128, 129 ; 
Scotch dinner, 131 ; country inci- 
dent, 139, 140 ; questioning a 
Parisian lady, 152 ; Waterloo 
letters, 156 ; how Italian seems 
to him, 155 ; incident of Scotch 
tiavel, 173 ; visit to a bereaved 
French lady, 182 ; travel in 
France, 219 ; lesson from a 
paintei-, 232 ; snubbed at a hotel, 
240-242; a French widow on her 
travels, 242, 243; a lady's igno- 
rance about religious distinctions, 
257; personal anecdotes about ig- 
norance between the English and 
French, 265-279 passim ; transla- 
tions into French, 267; Puseyite 
anecdote, 284, 285 ; conversations 
heard, 291 ; boat incident, 292, 
293; life-portraits, 300-308; ex- 
perience with procrastinators, 
317, 318 ; residence in Lancashire, 
318; interest in Plumpton family, 
323, 324; telegraphing a letteV, 
326; experience with un mot a 
la poste, 330; his boat wrongly 
painted, 359; his Parisian corre- 
spondent, 360, 361 ; efforts to en- 
sure accuracy, 368, 369 ; a strange 
lady's anxiety for his religious 
condition, 378 ; his Wenderholme, 



INDEX. 



415 



378 ; anonymous letter answered, 
379-382 ; dislike of cricket, 398. 

Harewood, Earl of, 323. 

Haste, connection with refinement 
and wealth, .125, 126. (See Lei- 
sure.) 

Hastings, Marquis of, his elope- 
ment, 321. 

Haweis, H. R., sermon on Egyptian 
war, 224. 

Hedges : English, 270, 271 ; sleep- 
ing under, 307. 

Hell, element in oratory, 192, 193. 
(See Priests.) 

Heredity, opinions not always he- 
reditary, 92-97. 

Heresy : banishment for, 161 ; dis- 
abilities, 162 et seq. ; punishment 
by fire, 180 ; pulpit attack, 192 ; 
shades in, 257, 258 ; resistance to 
God, 284. (See Roman Catholi- 
cism, etc.) 

Highlanders, their rowing, 154. 

Hirst, Eng., letters from, 320, 321. 

History, French knowledge of, 152. 

Holland, Goldsmith's travels, 309. 

Home : Family Ties (Essay V.), 62- 
77; a hell, 76; crowded, 77; ab- 
sence affecting friendship, 111; 
French, 142; English (Essay X.), 
130-147 passim ; the confessional, 
202; nostalgia, 286. 

Homer : indebtedness to the poor, 
22 ; on the appetite, 103. 

Honesty, at a discount, 162, 163, 
170. 

Honor, in religious conformity, 
162. 

Horace : familiarity with, 155 ; 
quoted, 289, 361. 

Horneck, Mrs., Goldsmith's friend, 
310. 

Horseback: illustration, 168, 260; 
luxury, 298. 

Hospitality: (Essay VII.), 99-109; 
help to liberty, 99 ; an educator 
for right or wrong, 100 ; opposite 
views, 100; tyranny over guests, 
101; reaction against old cus- 
toms, 102; a host's rights, some 
extra effort to be expected, 103 ; 
disregard of a guest's comfort, 
104; instances, opinions to be 
respected, 105 ; host should pro- 
tect a guest's rights, 106; anec- 
dote, 107 ; invasion of rights, 108 ; 



glaring instance, 109; affected by 
wealth, 140-144; excuse by a 
procrastinator, 318. (See Guests.) 

Hosts, rights and duties (Essay 
VII.), 99-109 passim. (See 
Hospitality.) 

Houghton, Lord, his knowledge of 
French, 151, 152. 

Housekeeping: ignorance of cost, 
258, 259 ; cares, 381. 

Houses : effect of living in the 
same, ix ; big, 145 ; evolution 
of dress, 189 ; movable, 261, 262 ; 
damage, 358. 

Hugo, Victor, use of a word, 273, 
274. 

Humanity: obligations to, 12; fu- 
ture happiness dependent upon 
a knowledge of languages, 148 
et seq. 

Humor: in different classes, 20; 
lack of it, 72 ; in using a foreign 
language, 157, 158; not carried 
into letters and pictures, 340- 
342. 

Hungarians, their sociability, 249. 

Hurry, to be distinguished from 
brevity in letter-writing, 331. 

Husbands : narration of experience, 
25, 26; unsuitable, 40; relations 
of noted men to wives, 44-62 pas- 
sim; compulsory unions, 94-98; 
old-fashioned letter, 322; use of 
post-cards, 329, 330 ; privacy of 
letters, 350; Montaigne's letter, 
351, 352. (See Wives, etc.) 

Hut: suggestions of a, 261, 262; for 
an artist, 314. 

Huxlev, Thomas Henry, on natural 
law,' 217, 219. 

Hypocrisy : to be avoided, xi-xiii ; 
in religion (Essay XII.), 161- 
174 passim ; not a Bohemian vice, 
296. 

Ibraheem, lost at sea, 226. 

Ideas, their interchange dependent 
upon language, 148. 

Idiosyncrasy : its charm, 9 ; in art 
and authorship, 12, 13; nullified 
by travel, 14, 15; affecting mari- 
tal happiness, 48-62 passim : 
affecting family ties, 64; wanted 
in letters, 347; in amusements, 
389; congenital, 396. 

Ignorance : Genteel (Essay XVIII. ), 



416 



INDEX. 



253-263; among French roy- 
alists, 254, 255 ; in religion. 
256, 257; in regard to pecuniary 
conditions, 258, 259 ; of likeness 
and unlikeness, 260, 261; dis- 
advantages, 262; drives people 
from society, 263 ; Patriotic (Es- 
say XIX.), 264-279; a narrow 
satisfaction, 264; French igno- 
rance of English art, 265, 267; 
of English game, 268 ; of Eng- 
lish fruit, 269; English errors as 
to mountains, 270, 271 ; fuel, 
manly vigor, 272, 273; word 
universal, 274; universities, 275, 
276; literature, 277; leads to war, 
277, 278 ; not the best patriotism, 
279 ; unavoidable, 301 ; contented, 
302; of gentlewomen, 381, 382. 
(See Nationality, etc.) 
Imagination, a luxury, 300. 
Immorality: too easily forgiven in 
princes, 168; considered essen- 
tial to Bohemianism, 295. (See 
Vice.) 
Immortality: connection with mu- 
sic, 191; menaces and rewards, 
193. ^ (See Priests, etc.) 
Impartiality, not shown by clergy, 

194. 
Impediments, to national inter- 
course (Essay XL), 148-160. 
Impertinence, ease of manner mis- 
taken for, 250. 
Incompatibility: inexplicable, 10; 
one of two great powers deciding 
intercourse, 11. (See Friendship, 
etc.) 
Independence: (Essay II.). 12-32; 
illusory and real, influence of lan- 
guage, 12; illustrations, 13; rail- 
way travel destructive to, 14; 
conventionality and French ideas 
of good form, 15 ; social repres- 
sions and London life, 16; local 
despotism, 17; the French rural 
aristocracy, 18; illustrations and 
social exclusion, 19; humor and 
domestic anxiety, society not 
essential, 20; palliations to soli- 
tude, outside of society, absolute 
solitude, 21; rural illustrations, 
22; incident in a French town, 
23; one in Scotland, 24; on a 
steamer, 25 ; English reticence, 
26; an evil of solitude, pursuits 



in common, 27; illustration from 
Mill, deterioration of an artist, 
28; patient endurance, the re- 
freshment of books, 29; compan- 
ionship of nature, 30; consolation 
of labor, 31; an objection to this 
relief, 32; a fault, 69; of Philis- 
tines and. Bohemians (Essav 
XXL), 295-314 passim. (See 
Society, etc.) 

Independents, the, in England, 170. 

India: a brother's cold farewell, 
67; relations of England, 279. 

Indians, their Bohemian life, 298, 
306. 

Individualism, affected by railways, 
13-15. 

Individuality, reliance upon our 
own, iv. 

Indolence: destroying friendship, 
116; stupid, 197; causes wrong 
judgment, 293; part of Bohe- 
mianism, 295; in business, 356; 
in reading letters, 366-369. 

Indulgences, affecting friendship, 
115. 

Industry: to be respected, 132; 
professional work, 196; Bnffon's 
and Littre's, 209, 210; ignorance 
about English, 265, 266; of a 
Philistine, 300; in letter-writing, 
356. 

Inertia, in middle-life, 302. 

Infidelity : affecting political rights, 
162, 163; withstood by Dissent, 
257. 

Ink: dilution to save expense, 333; 
red, 369. 

Inquisition, the, in Spain, 180. 

Inspiration, in Jacquemont's letters, 
348. 

Intellectuality: a restraint upon 
passion, 38; affecting family ties, 
73, 74 ; its pursuits. 127 ; denied to 
England, 265, 266, 267; ambition 
for, 283 ; the accompaniment of 
wealth, 297; outside of, 301; en- 
joyed, 306. 

Intelligence : the supreme, 176, 177 ; 
connection with leisure, 197. 

Intercession, feminine fondness for, 
175, 176. 

Intercourse. (This subject is so 
interwoven with the whole work 
that special references are im- 
possible.) 



INDEX. 



417 



Interdependence, illustrated by 
literary work, 12. 

Interviews, compared with letters, 
354-357. 

Intimacy: mysteriously hindered, 
10; with nature, 302. 

Intolerance, of amusements, 389. 

Intrusion, dreaded by the English, 
243, 247. 

Inventions, why sometimes mis- 
judged, 292, 293. 

Irascibility, in parents, 75, 76. 

Iron, in France, 272. 

Irving, Washington, on Goldsmith, 
310. 

Isolation: affecting study, 28, 29; 
alleviations, 29-31. (See Jnde- 
pendence.) 

Italian Language : Latin natural- 
ized, 155; merriment in using, 
158. 

Italy: Byron's sojourn, 50: Goe- 
the's, 51, titles and poverty, 136; 
overstatement a habit, 234; pa- 
pal government, 255, 256; trav- 
elling-vans, 261, allusion, 271; 
why live there, 285,286; tourists, 
291 , Goldsmith's travels, 309; 
forms in letter-writing, 325. 

Jacquemojnt, Victor, his letters, 
348-350. 

James, an imaginary friend, 343, 
344. 

Jardin des Plantes, Buffon's work, 
209. 

Jealousy: national, 7; domestic, 
65, youthful, effect of primogeni- 
ture, 66; between England and 
France, 150; Greece need not 
awaken, 159, excited by the con- 
fessional, 202, 203 ; in anonymous 
letters, 371, 

Jerusalem, the Ark lost, 229. 

Jewelry: worn by priests, -202; en- 
joyment of, 297. 

Jews: not the only subjects of use- 
ful study, 207, 208, 211, God of 
Battles, 224; advance of knowl- 
edge, 230. (See Bible.) 

John, an imaginary friend, 344, 
345. 

Jones, an imaginary gentleman, 
130. 

justice: feminine disregard, 380; 
connection with priesthood, 194. 



Keble, John, Christian Year, 198. 

Kempis, Thomas a, his great work, 
95. 

Kenilworth, anecdote, 277. 

Kindness, how to be received, 117. 

Kindred: affected by incompatibil- 
ity, 10; Family Ties (Essay V.), 
63 77; given by Fate, 75. (See 
Sons, etc.) 

Kings: divine right, 255; on cards, 
289; courtesv in correspondence, 
317; a poetic figure, 386, 387. 
(See Rank, etc.) 

Knarsbrugh, Eng\, 320. 

Knyghton, Henry, quotation, 251. 

Lakes, English, 270. 

Lancashire, Eng. : all residents not 
in cotton -trade, 288; residence, 
318, drinking-habits, 378. 

Land-ownership, 131. 

Landscape: companionship, 31; ig- 
norance about the English, 270. 

Languages : as affecting friendship, 
7 ; similarity, 10 ; influences in- 
terdependence, 12; study of for- 
eign, 29, 84, 85; ignorance of, an 
Obstacle (Essay XL), 148-100; 
impediment to national inter- 
course, 148 ; mutual ignorance of 
the French and English, 149; 
commercial advantages, Ameri- 
can kinship, 150; an imperfect 
knowledge induces reticence, 151; 
rarity of full knowledge, 152 ; il- 
lustrations, first stage of learning 
a tongue, 153; second, 154; third, 
fourth, 155; fifth, learning by 
ear, 156; absurdities, idioms, 
forms of politeness, 157; a uni- 
versal speech, 158 ; Greek com- 
mended, 159 ; advantages, 160 ; 
one enough, 301, 305; acquaint- 
ance with six, 304; foreign letters, 
364, 365. 

Latin: teaching, 84; construction 
unnatural, 155; in the Renais- 
sance, 212; church, 258; proverb, 
287; poetry, 289; in telegrams, 
324; Horace, 361; corrogata, 390. 

Laws : difficult to ascertain, viii ; 
human resignation to, xi; of Hu- 
man Intercourse (Essay L), 3-11; 
fixed knowledge difficult, 3, com- 
mon belief, 4; similarity of inter- 
est, 5 , may breed antagonism, 6 ; 



27 



418 



INDEX. 



national prejudices, 7; likeness 
begets friendship, 8; idiosyncra- 
sy and adaptability, 9 ; intimacy 
slow, 10 ; law of the pleasure of 
human intercourse still hidden, 
11 ; fixed, 179 ; feminine disre- 
gard, 181; quiet tone, 193; regu- 
larity and interference (Essay 
XV.), 215-231 passim ; legal dis- 
tinctions, 280, 281. 

Laymen, contrasted with clergy, 
181, 182. 

Lectures, one-sided, 29. 

Legouve, M. : on filial relations, 78 ; 
religious question, 93; anecdote 
of chirography, 332. 

Leisure: its connection with refine- 
ment, 125, 126; varying in differ- 
ent professions, 196, 197. 

Leloir, Louis, fondness for etching, 
401. 

Lent, allusion, 198. 

Letters. (See Correspondence.) 

Lever, Charles: quotation from 
That Boy of Norcott's, 219, 250; 
finances misunderstood, 259, 260; 
boating, 259, 394. 

Lewes, George Henry: relation to 
Marian Evans, 45 ; quotation from 
Life of Goethe, 241. 

Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, im- 
mortal saying, 385. 

L'Honneur et P Argent, quotation. 
304, 335. 

Liberality : French lack of, 18, 19 ; 
induced hy hospitality, 99, 100; 
apparent, 173. 

Liberty: in religion (Essay XII.), 
161-174 ; private and public, 281, 
282; liberte, 282, 283; with 
friends in letters, 353. 

Libraries: value, 286, 287; narrow 
specimens, 302. 

Lies, at a premium, 162, 163. 

Life : companionship for, 44-62 ; en- 
joyed in different ways, 306. 

Likeness, the secret of companion- 
ship, 8. 

Limpet, an illustration of incivilitv, 
108. 

Literature: conventional, 15; influ- 
ence of the humbler classes, 22, 
23; softens isolation, 29, 31; 
deaths from love, 39 ; affecting 
fraternity, 61; youthful nonsense 
not tolerated in books, 89; supe- 



riority to mercenary motives, 132 ; 
advantages of mutual national 
knowledge, 119-153; rivals in its 
own domain, 151; not necessarily 
religious, 198; English periodical, 
237; ignorance about English, 
267; and Philistinism, 286,^287; 
singleness of aim, 289 ; English, 
305 ; not an amusement, ,400. 

Little, Maximilien Paul Emile, his 
noble life, 209-211. 

Livelihood, anxiety about, 20. 

London : mental independence, 16- 
18; solitude needless, 20; Mill's 
rank, 56; old but new, 136; 
Flower Sunday, 189; pestilence 
improbable, 222; The Times, 211; 
centre of English literature, 267; 
business time contrasted with that 
of Paris, 273; buildings, 291; 
Palmer leaving, 310; cabman, 
335; a famous Londoner, 399. 

Lottery, illustrative of kinship, 75. 

Louis II., amusements, 386-388. 

Louis XVIII. , impiety, 167. 

Louvre: English art excluded, 267; 
confounded with other buildings, 
291. 

Love: of nature, 30; Passionate (Es- 
say III.), 33-13; nature, blindness, 
33; not the monopoly of youth, 
debaucheiy, 34; permanence not 
assured, 35; " in a cottage," per- 
ilous to happiness, socially lim- 
ited, 36 ; restraints, higher and 
lower, 37; varieties, selfishness, 
in intellectual people, 38; poetic 
subject, dying for, 39 ; old maids, 
unlawful "in married people, 40; 
French fiction, early marriage re- 
pressed by civilization, 41; pas- 
sion out of place, the endless song, 
42; natural correspondences and 
Shelley, 43; in marriage, 44-62; 
some family illustrations, 63-77; 
wife's relations, 73 ; paternal and 
filial (Essay VI.), 78-98 passim; 
between friends (Essay VIII.), 
110-118; divine, 178, 179; family, 
205. (See Brothers, Family, 
etc.) 

Lowell, James Russell, serious hu- 
mor, 20. 

Lower Classes, the: English rural, 
22 ; rudeness, 75 ; religious privi- 
leges, 170, 171. 



INDEX. 



419 



Luxury, material, 298. (See Phi- 
listinism. ) 
Lyous, France, the Academy, 275. 

Macaulay, T. B., quotations, 181, 
200, 224, 344, 345. 

Macleod, Dr. Norman, his sym- 
pathy, 186, 187. 

Magistracy, French, 283. 

Mahometanism, as affecting inter- 
course, 5. 

Malice: harmless, 269; in letters, 
371-377. 

Manchester, Eng., life there, 31. 

Manners: affected by wealth, 125- 
129 ; by leisure, 197 ; by aristoc- 
racy, 246. (See Courtesy, etc.) 

Manufactures : under fixed law, 
228; ignorance about English, 
265, 266, 268. 

Marriage : responsibility increased, 
25, 26; or celibacy? 34; Shel- 
ley's, does not assure love, 35; 
following love, 36 ; irregular, 37 ; 
restraints of superior intellects, 
38; love outside of, 40; early 
marriage restrained by civiliza- 
tion, 41; philosophy of this, 42; 
Companionship in (Essay IV.), 
44-62; life-journey, 44; aliena- 
tions for the sake of intellectual 
companionship, 45; illustrations, 
46, 47; mistakes not surprising, 
48; Bvron, 49, 50; Goethe, 51, 
52; Mill, 53, 54; difficulty in 
finding true mates, 55; excep- 
tional cases not discouraging, 56; 
easier for ordinary people, 57; 
inequality, 58 ; hopeless tranquil- 
lit}', 59; youthful dreams dis- 
pelled, 60; Nature's promises, 
how fulfilled, 61; "I thee wor- 
ship," 62; wife's relations, 73; 
filial obedience, 94-97; destroy- 
ing friendship, 115 ; affecting 
personal wealth, 119 ; social treat- 
ment, 120; of children, 123; ef- 
fect of royal religion, 166 ; and 
of lower-class, 171; civil and 
religious, 184, 185 ; clerical, 196, 
198-201; of absent friends, 338; 
French customs, 339 ; Montaigne's 
sentiments, 351, 352; slanderous 
attempts to prevent, 371-375 ; 
household cares, 381 ; breakfasts, 
385, 386. (See Women, etc.) 



Mask, a simile, 370. 
Mediocrity, dead level of, 236. 
Mediterranean Sea, allusion, 399. 
Meissonier, Jean Ernest Louis, his 

talent, 284. 
Melbourne, Bishop of, 221. 
Men, choose for themselves, 197. 
(See Marriage, Sons, Women, 
etc.) 

Mephistopheles, allusion, 235. 

Merchants, connection with national 
peace, 149, 150. 

Merimee, Prosper, Correspondence, 
321. 

Metallurgy, under fixed law, 228. 

Methodists, the: in England, 170; 
hymns, 257. 

Michelet, Jules,, on the Church, 189, 
190; on the confessional, 202, 203. 

Middle Classes: Dickens's descrip- 
tions, 20; rank of some authors, 
56; domestic rudeness, 75; table 
customs, 103; religious freedom, 
170; clerical inferences, 183. (See 
Classes, Lower Class, etc.) 

Mignet, Francois Auguste Marie : 
friendship with Thiers, 120 ; con- 
dition, 121. 

Military Life: illustration, 21; fil- 
ial obedience, 80; religion, 123; 
religious conformity, 169 ; an- 
tagonistic to toleration, 173, 174; 
French, 272; allusion, 300, 307. 

Mill, John Stuart: social affinities, 
20 ; aversion to unintellectual so- 
ciety, 27, 28 ; relations to Avomen, 
53-55 ; social rank, 56 ; education 
by his father, 81-84; on friend- 
ship, 112, 113; on sneering de- 
preciation, 237; on English con- 
duct towards strangers, 245 ; on 
social stupidity, 263. 

Milnes, Kiehard Monckton. (See 
Lord Houghton.) 

Milton, John, Palmer's constant in- 
terest, 313. 

Mind, weakened by concession, 147. 

Misanthropy, appearance of, 27. 

Montaigne, Michel: marriage, 59; 
letter to wife, 351, 352. 

Montesquieu, Baron, allusion, 147. 

Months, trade terms for, 365. 

Morris, Lewis, A Cynic's Day- 
dream, 393. 

Mothers, " loud-tongued," 75. (Se6 
Children, Women, etc.) 



420 



INDEX. 



Mountains: climbing affected by 
railways, 14 ; quotation from 
Byron) 30 ; in pictures, 43 ; glory 
in England and France, 270, 271; 
Mont Blanc, where situated, 
271. 

Mozart, Jobann Chrysostom Wolf- 
gang Amadeus. allusion, 289. 

Muloch, Dinah Maria, confounded 
with George Eliot, 290. 

Music : detached from religion, xii, 
xiii; voice of love, 42; affecting 
fraternity, 64; connection with 
religion, 191; illustration of har- 
mony, 389. 

Nagging, by parents, 76. 

Napoleon I. :"and the Universe, 273, 
274; privations, 308; mot of the 
Pope, 341; Remusat letters, 350. 

Napoleon III.: death, son, 225; ig- 
norance of German power, 278; 
losing Sedan, 308. 

Nationality: prejudices, 7; to be 
respected at table, 106, 107; dif- 
ferent languages an obstacle to 
intercourse (Essay XL), 118-160; 
mutual ignorance (Essay XIX.), 
264-279 passim. 

National Gallery, London, 291. 

Nature: compensations, iv; causes, 
xii; laws not deducible from 
single cases, 4; inestimable gifts, 
26 ; beauty an alleviation of soli- 
tude, loyalty, 30, 31; opposed 
to civilization in love-matters, 
41; universality of love, 42, 43; 
promises fulfilled, 60-62 ; revival 
of study, 212 ; laws fixed (Essay 
XV.), 215-231 passim; De Saus- 
sure's study, 230, 231 ; expressed 
in painting, 232, 233; neai-ness, 
303-314 passim ; her destrovers, 
393. 

Navarre, King Henry of, 221. 

Navy, a young officer's acquain- 
tance, 25, 26. 

Neglect, destroys friendship, 116. 

Nelson, Lord: the navv in his time, 
279; letter in battle," 327, 328. 

Nerves, affected by rudeness, 128, 
129. 

New England, a blond native, 240. 

Newspapers: on nature and the 
supernatural, xii; adultery re- 
ports in English, 41; personal 



interest, 124; regard for titles, 
137; quarrels between English 
and American, 150 ; reading, 
156; on royalty, 166, 167 ; deaths 
in, 225 ; English and French sub- 
servience to rank, 218; a bour- 
geois complaint, 286 ; crossing 
the seas, 337, 338. 
I New Year's, French customs, 339. 

Niagara Rapids, 290. 
I Night, Palmer's watches, 312. 

Nikias, a military leader, his su- 
perstition, 215-217, 229. 

Nineteenth Century, earlier half, 
205, 206. 

Nobility: the English have two 
churches to choose from, 169- 
171, 173 ; opposition to Dissent, 
256, 257. 

Nonconformity, English, 256, 257. 
(See Dissent, etc.) 

Normans, influence of the Conquest, 
251, 252. 

Oaths, no obstacle to hypocrisy, 
162. 

Obedience, filial (Essay VI.), 78-98. 

Observation, cultivated, 290, 291. 
j Obstacles : of Language, between 
nations (Essav XL), 148-160; of 
Religion (Essay XII. ), 161-174. 

Occupations, easily confused, 288, 
289. 

Oil, mineral, 288. 

Old Maids, defence, 379-382. 

Olympus, unbelief in its gods, 162. 

Oman, sea of, 226. 

Opinions : not the result of volition, 
xiii; of guests to be respected, 
105, 106; changes affecting friend- 
ship, 112, 113. 

Orange, William of, correspond- 
ence, 344, 345. 

Oratory, connection with religion, 
xii, 191-195. 

Order of the Universe, to be trust- 
ed, iii. 

Originality: seen in authorship, 12; 
how hindered and helped, 13, 14 ; 
French estimate, 15. 

Orthodoxy, placed on a level with 
hypocrisy, 162, 163. 

Ostentation, to be shunned in 
amusements, 401. 

Oxford : opinion of a learned doc- 
tor about Christ's divinity, 6; 



INDEX. 



421 



Shelley's expulsion, 96; its an- 
tiquity, 275, 276. 

Paganism: hypocrisy, and pre- 
ferment, 162; gods and wars, 
224. 

Paget, Lady Florence, curt letter, 
321. 

Pain, feminine indifference to, 180. 

Painters: taste in travel, 14; de- 
terioration of a, 28 ; discovering 
new beauties, 60; Corot, 310, 311; 
Palmer, 312; one in adversity, 
314 ; gayety not in pictures, 
341 ; sketches in letters, 345; of 
boats, 359; lack of business in 
French painter, 367, 368; idle 
sketches, 400; Leloir, 401. 

Painter's Camp in the Highlands, 
379. 

Painting: fondness for it a cause 
of discord, 6 ; French excellence, 
8; interdependence, 13; high 
aims, 28; palpitating with love, 
43 ; affecting fraternity, 64 ; 
none in heaven, 191; not ne- 
cessarily religious, 198; copies, 
203; two methods, 232, 233; 
convenient building, 261; igno- 
rance about English, 265-267; 
not merely an amusement, 400. 
(See Art, etc.) 

Paleontology, allusion, 206. 

Palgrave, Gifford, saved from ship- 
wreck, 226-228. 

Palmer, George, a speech, 223. 

Palmer, Samuel, his Bohemianism, 
312, 313. 

Palmer, William, in Russia, 257, 
258. 

Paper, used in correspondence, 
328. 

Paradise : the arts in, 191 ; affecting 
pulpit oratory, 193. (See Priests. ) 

Paris : an artistic centre, 8 ; in- 
civility at a dinner, 107; effect 
of wealth, 121 ; elegant house, 
142 ; English residents, 150 ; 
a lady's reply about English 
knowledge of French language, 
152; Notre Dame, 190; Jardin 
des Plantes, 209 ; hotel incident, 
240-242; not a desert, 242; light 
of the world, 266, 267, 274; 
resting after dejeuner, 273 ; con- 
fusion about buildings, 291 ; an 



illiterate tradesman, 360, 361; 
the Salon, 367. 

Parliament: illustration of hered- 
ity, 93 ; indebtedness of mem- 
bers to trade, 135; infidelity in, 
162; superiority of pulpit, 191 ; 
George Palmer, 223; questions 
in, 241; Houses, 291. 

Parsimony : affecting family ties, 
70; in hospitality, 104, 105. 

Patriotism : obligations, 12; Littr^'s, 
210 ; Patriotic Ignorance (Essay 
XIX.), 264-279; places people in 
a dilemma, 264; anecdotes of 
French and English errors, about 
art, literature, mountains, land- 
scapes, ' fuel, ore, schools, lan- 
guage, 265-277 ; ignorance lead- 
ing to war, 277-279; suspected 
of lacking, 287-288. 

Peace, affected by knowledge of 
languages, 148-150, 160. 

Peculiarity, of English people to- 
wards each other (Essay XVII.), 
239-252. 

Pedagogues, their narrowness, 154. 

Pedestrianism : as affected by rail- 
ways, 14; in France, 272, 273; 
not enjoyed, 302. 

Peel, Arthur, his indebtedness to 
trade, 135. 

Pencil, use, when permissible, 333. 

Periodicals, akin to correspondence, 
30. 

Persecution, feminine S} T mpathy 
with, 80, 181. 

Perseverance, Buffon's and Littre's, 
209, 210. 

Personality: its " abysmal deeps," 
11 ; repressed by conventionality, 
15 ; accompanies independence, 
17; affecting family ties, 63-77 
passim ; paternal and filial differ- 
ences, 78-98 ])assim ; its frank 
recognition, 98; confused, anec- 
dotes, 289, 290. 

Persuasion, feminine trust in, 175. 

Pestilence, God's anger in, 222. 

Peter the Great, sad relations to 
his son, 95, 96. 

Philistinism : illustrative stories, 
285, 286; defined, 297; passion 
for comfort, 298; asceticism and 
indulgence, 299, 300; a life-por- 
trait, 300-303 ; estimate of life, 
303 ; an English lady's parlor, 



422 



INDEX. 



304, 305; contrast, 306; avoid- 
ance of needless exposure, 313. 

Philology: a rival of literature, 154; 
favorable to progress in language, 
155. 

Philosophy : detached from reli- 
gion, xii ; rational tone, 193. 

Photographv : a French experience, 
24; under fixed law, 228. 

Phvsicians: compared with priests, 
186 ; rational, 193; Littre's ser- 
vice, 210. 

Picturesque, regard for the, 7. 

Piety: and law (Essay XY.), 215- 
231 passim; shipwreck, 226, 
227. 

Pitt, "William, foreign disturbances 
in his dav, 150. 

Pius VII., , on Xapoleon, 341. 

Play, boyish friendship in, 111. 

Pleasures, three in amusements, 
399, 400. 

Plebeians, in England, 251, 252. 

Plumpton Correspondence, 318- 
323, 331. 

Poetry: detached from religion, 
xii: of love, 42; dulness to, 47; 
Shelley's, 47; Byron's, 50, 345- 
349; Goethe's, 51; and science, 
57 ; Tennyson on Brotherhood, 
67; lament, 73; art, 154; music in 
heaven, 191: Keble, 198; Battle 
of Ivry, 224 ; French, 268, 269 ; 
Latin, loyalty of Tennyson, 289; 
French couplet, 304; in a library, 
305; '-If I be dear," 325; 
Horace, 361; Palace of Art, 386; 
quotation from Morris, 393; line 
about anticipation, 399. 

Poets : ideas about the harmlessness 
of love, 36; avoidance of prac- 
tical difficulties, 39 ; love in 
natural scenery, 43. 

Politics: conventional, 15; French 
narrowness, 18, 19; coffee-house, 
28; inherited opinions, 93; opin- 
ions of guests to be respected, 
105, 106; affecting friendship, 
113-115 ; affected by ignorance 
of language, 148, 150, 160; adap- 
tation of Greek language, 158; 
disabilities arising from religion, 
161-174 ; divine government, 
229; genteel ignorance, 254-256; 
votes sought, 257; affected by 
national ignorance, 277-279 . dis- 



tinctions confounded, 280-284; 
verses on letter-writing, 335. 

Ponsard, Francois, quotations, 304, 
335. 

Popes : their infidelity, 162 ; tempo- 
ral power, 255, 256. (See Roman 
Catholicism, etc.) 

Popular Notions, often wrong, 292. 

Postage, cheap, 336. 

Postal Union, a forerunner, 159. 

Post-cards, affecting correspond- 
ence, 329, 330, 335. 

Poverty: allied with shrewdness, 
22; affecting friendship (Essav 
IX.), 116, 119-129; priestly vis- 
its, 183; Littre's service," 210; 
ignorance about, 258-260 ; French 
rhyme, 304; not always the con- 
comitant of Bohemianism, 309; 
not despised, 314; in epistolary 
forms, 317. 

Prayers: reading in French, 158; 
averting calamities, 220-231 pas- 
sim. 

Prejudices: about great men, 4; 
national, 7; of English gentle- 
women, 382. 

Pride: of a wife, 59 ; in family 
wealth, 66; refusal of gifts, 68 ; 
in shooting, 390. 

Priesthood: Priests and Women 
(Essay XIII. ), 175-204; meeting 
feminine dependence, 178 ; affec- 
tionate interest, 179; representing 
God, 182; sympathy, 183; mar- 
riages and burials, 184; baptism 
and confirmation, 185; death, 
186 : Queen Victoria's reflections, 
186, 187; aesthetic interest, 188; 
vestments, 189 ; architecture, 190; 
music, 191; oratory and dignitv, 
192; heaven and hell, 193; par- 
tisanship, 194 ; association in 
benevolence, 195; influence of 
leisure, 196; custom and cere- 
mony, 197; holy seasons, 198; 
celibacy, 199; marriage in for- 
mer times, 200; sceptical sons, 
201 ; confessional, 202 ; assump- 
tion of superiority, 203 ; perfunc- 
tory goodness, 204. 
Primogeniture, affecting family ties, 

66. 
Privacy; of a host, to be respected, 

109 ;' in letters, 350, 357. 
Procrastination : in correspondence, 



INDEX. 



428 



318, 319, 356; anecdotes, 366- 
369. 

Profanity, definition, 208. 

Professions, contrasted with trades, 
132, 133. 

Progress, five stages in the study 
of language, 153-157. 

Promptness : in correspondence, 
316, 317, 329 ; in business, 368. 

Propriety, cloak for vice, 297. 

Prose: an art, 154; eschewed bv 
Tennyson, 289. 

Prosody, rival of literature, 154. 

Protestantism: in France, 19, 165, 
256; Prussian tyranny, 173; ex- 
clusion of music, 191; clerical 
marriages, 200, 201; auricular 
confession, 201-203; liberty in- 
fringed, 281. 

Providence and Law (Essay XV.), 
215-231 passim. 

Prussia: Protestant tyranny, 173; 
a soldier's cloak, 189; military 
strength, 278. 

Public Men, wrong judgment 
about, 4. 

Punch's Almanack, quoted, 133. 

Pursuits, similarity in, 10. 

Puseyism, despised, 284, 285. 

Puzzle, language regarded as a, 
153, 154. 

Rabelais, quotation, 165. 

Racehorses, illustration, 65. 

Radicalism, definition, 282, 283. 

Railways: affecting independence, 
13-15; meditations in a French, 
17; story in illustration of rude- 
ness, 108, 109; distance from, 
116; French accident, 218-220; 
moving huts, 261, 262; Stephen- 
son's locomotive, 293; allusion, 
309; journeys saved, 360; com- 
pared to sailing, 395. 

Rain : cause of accident, 219 ; prayers 
for, 221. 

Rank : a power for good, 5 ; conver- 
sation of French people of, 16; 
pursuit of, 27 ; discrimination in 
hospitality, 104; affecting friend- 
ship, 116; Differences (Essay X.), 
130-147; social precedence, 130; 
land and money, 131; trades and 
professions, 132-135; unreal dis- 
tinctions, 135; to be ignored, 136; 
English and Continental views, 



136, 137; family without title. 
138; affecting hospitality, 139- 
145; price, deference, 145-147; 
English admiration, 241, 242, 248, 
249-252; connection with amuse- 
ment, 383-401 passim. 

Rapidity, in letter-writing, 324, 325. 

Reading, in a foreign language, 
154-158. 

Reading, Eng., speech, 223, 224. 

Reasoning, in letters, 384, 385. 

Rebels, contrasted with reformers, 
280. 

Recreation, the purpose of amuse- 
ment, 389. 

Reeve, Henry, knowledge of French, 
152. 

Reformers, and rebels, 280, 281. 

Refinement : affecting family har- 
mony, 64; companionship, 71; 
enhanced by wealth, 125, 126. 

Religion: affecting human inter- 
course, xi-xiii; detached from 
the arts, xii ; affecting friendship, 
5, 6; conventional, 15; Chelten- 
ham prejudice, 19; formal in Eng- 
land, 63; affecting fraternity, 64; 
affecting family regard, 74; cler- 
gyman's son, 90, 91; family dif- 
ferences, 93, 94; to be respected 
in guests, 105, 106; destroving 
friendship, 113 ; Evangelical, 123; 
personal deterioration, 124 ; mer- 
cenary motives, 132, 133; title- 
worship, 137 ; an Obstacle (Essay 
XII.), 161-174; the dominant, 
161 ; a hindrance to honest people, 
162; dissimulation, 163; apparent 
liberty, 164; social penalties, 165; 
no liberty for princes, 166 ; French 
illustration, 167 ; royal liberty in 
morals, 168; official conformity, 
169; greater freedom in the lower 
ranks, 170; less in small commu- 
nities, 171 ; liberty of rejection and 
dissent, 172; false position, 173; 
enforced conformitv, 174 ; Priests 
and Women (Essay XIII.), 175- 
204; of love, 178, 179; Why we 
are Apparently becoming Less 
Religious (Essay XIV.), 205-214; 
meditations of ladies of former 
generation, 205; trust in Bible, 
206 ; idealization, 207 ; Nineteenth 
Century inquiries, 208 ; Buffon as 
an illustration, 209; Littre, 210; 



424 



INDEX. 



compared with Bible characters, 
211; the Renaissance, 212; boun- 
daries outgrown, 213; less theol- 
ogy, 214; How we are Really 
becoming Less Religious (Essay 
XV.), 215-231 ; superstition, 215"; 
supernatural interference, 216, 
217 ; idea of law diminishes emo- 
tion, 218; railway accident, 219; 
prayers and accidents, 220; future 
definition, 221; penitence and 
punishment, 222; war and God, 
223; natural order, 224; Provi- 
dence, 225; salvation from ship- 
wreck, 226; un hazard providen- 
tiel, 227 ; irreliyion, 228; less 
piety, 229 ; devotion and science, 
230; wise expenditure of time, 
231; feuds, 240; genteel igno- 
rance of established churches, 
255-25 S ; French ignorance of 
English Church, 275 ^ distinctions 
confounded, 281,282; intolerance 
mixed with social contempt, 284, 
285; activity limited to religion 
and riches, 301; in old letters, 
320, 321, 323; female interest in 
the author's welfare, 377, 378 ; 
in theology, 379, 380. (See 
Church of England, Methodism, 
Protestantism, etc.) 

Re'musat, Mme. de, letters, 350. 

Renaissance, expansion of study in 
the, 212. 

Renan, Ernest, one objection to 
trade, 132. 

Republic, French, 254, 283, 284. 

Residence, affecting friendship, 116. 

Respect : the road to filial love, 98; 
why liked, 122; in correspond- 
ence, 316. 

Restraints, of marriage and love, 
36, 37. 

Retrospection, pleasures of, 400. 

Revolution, French, 209, 246, 283. 
(See France.) 

Riding, Lever's difficulties, 260. 

Rifles: in hunting, 391-393; names, 
392. 

Rights. (See different heads, such 
as Hospitality, Sons, etc.) 

Robinson Crusoe, illustration, 21. 

Rock, simile, 251. 

Roland, his sword Durindal, 391. 

Roman Camp, site, 14. 

Roman Catholicism : its effect on 



companionship, 6; seen in rural 
France, 19; illustration of the 
Pope, 87; infidel sons, 93; wis- 
dom of celibacy, 120; infidel 
dignitaries, 162; liberty in Spain, 
164; royalty hearing Mass, 167; 
military salute to the Host, 169; 
recognition in England, 169, 170, 
173; Continental intolerance, 172, 
173; a conscientious traveller, 
173; oppression in Prussia, 173; 
tradesmen compelled to hear 
Mass, 174; Madonna's influence, 
176; priestly consolation, 183; 
use of art, 188-190; Dominican 
dress, 189 ; cathedrals, the Host, 
190; astuteness, celibacy, 199; 
female allies, 200; confessional, 
201, 202; feudal tenacity, 255; 
Protestantism ignored, 256; Ro- 
manism ignored by the Greek 
Church, 258; compulsory attend- 
ance, 282. (See Priesthood, Re- 
ligion, etc.) 

Romance: like or dislike for, 7; 
glamour of love, 42. 

Rome: people not subjected to the 
papacv, 255, 256; Byron's letter, 
347. 

Rossetti, on Mrs. Harriett Shellev, 
46. 

Rouen Cathedral, 190. 

Royal Academy, London, 266, 276. 

Royal Society, London, 274. 

Rovalty, its religious bondage, 166— 
169, 171. 

Rugby, residence of a father, 84. 

Ruolz, the inventor, his bituminous 
paper, 358, 359. 

Russell, Lord Arthur, his knowl- 
edge of French, 152. 

Russia: religious position of the 
Czar, 168; orthodoxy, 257, 258; 
war with Turkey, 278. (See 
Greek Church.) 

Sabbath, its observance, 123. 
Sacredness, definition of, 208. 
Sacrifices : demanded by courtesy, 

315, 316; in letter-writing, 329- 

331; to indolence, 368. 
Sahara, love-simile, 60. 
Saint Bernard, qualities, 230, 231. 
Saint Hubert's Day, carousal, 345. 
Saints, in everv occupation, 209. 
Salon, French, "266, 276, 367. 



INDEX. 



425 



Sarcasm: lasting effects, 66; brutal 
and paternal, 97. 

Satire. (See Sarcasm.) 

Savagery, return to, 298. (See 
Barbarism, Civilization.) 

Saxons, influence in England, 251, 
252. 

Scepticism: and religious rites, 
184, 185; in clergymen's sons, 
201. (SeeHeresij.) 

Schools, prejudice against French, 
106. 

Schuyler's Life of Peter the Great, 
96. 

Science : study affected by isola- 
tion, 29 ; and poetry, 57 ; superi- 
ority to mercenary motives, 132 ; 
in language, 154; adaptation of 
Greek language to, 158; illustra- 
tion, 166; cold, 176, 178, 190; 
disconnected with religion, 198; 
affecting Bible study, 206; con- 
nection with religion (Essay 
XV.), 215-231 passim. 

Scolding, 75, 76. 

Scotland: a chance acquaintance, 
25, 26; gentleman's sacrifice for 
his son, 84; incident in a coun- 
try-house, 131; religious incident 
in travel, 173 ; a painter's hint, 
232; the Highlands, 271; scenerv, 
379; cricket impossible, 398. 

Scott, Sir Walter : indebtedness to 
the poor, 22; Lucy of Lammer- 
moor, 39, 143, 144; Jeanie Deans, 
175; supposed American igno- 
rance of, 277; quotation from 
Waverley, 327; Provost's letter, 
365. 

Sculpture : warmed by love, 42, 43 ; 
none in heaven, 191 ; ignorance 
about English, 265. (See Art, etc.) 

Seals on letters, 326-328. 

Secularists: in England, 171; tame 
oratory, 193. 

Sedan, cause of lost battle, 308. 

Seduction, how restrained, 38. 

Self-control, grim, 397. 

Self-esteem, effect of benevolence 
in developing, 196. 

Self-examination, induced bv let- 

^ ters, 380. 

Self-indulgence, of opposite kinds, 
299, 300. 

Self-interest: affecting friendship, 
116; at the confessional, 202. 



Selfishness : affected by marriage, 
26; desire for com tort, 27; affect- 
ing passion, 38 ; in hosts, 101, 
102; in a letter, 334; in amuse- 
ments, 397. 

Sensuality, connection with Bohe- 
mianism, 296. 

Sentences, reading, 156. 

Sentiment, none m business, 353, 
364. 

Separations: between friends, 111- 
118; letter- writing during, 338; 
Tasso family, 350, 351. 

Sepulchre, whited, 297. 

Sermons : one-sided, 29 ; in library, 
302. 

Servants : marriage to priests, 200 ; 
often needful, 259; concomitants 
of wealth, 297, 298; none, 307; 
in letters, 324; anonymous letter, 
376 ; hired to wait, 397. 

Severn River, 270. 

Sexes : pleasure in association, 3 ; 
passionate love, 34; relations 
socially limited, 36, 37 ; antago- 
nism of nature and civilization, 
41 ; in natural scenery, 43 ; in- 
harmony in marriages, 44-62 
passim ; sisters and brothers, 65 ; 
connection with confession, 201- 
204; lack of analysis, 280; Bohe- 
mian relations, 296, 297. 

Shakspeare: indebtedness to the 
poor, 22; Juliet, 39; portraiture 
of youthful nonsense, 88; allu- 
sion by Grant White, 277 ; Mac- 
beth and Hamlet confused, 290 ; 
Polonius's advice applied to Gold- 
smith, 310. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe : his study 
of past literature, 13; passionate 
love, 34; marriages, 35, 46-48, 
55, 56; quotation, 43; disagree- 
ment with his father, 96, 97. 

Ships: passing the Suez canal, xii; 
interest of Peter the Great, and 
dislike of his -on, 85; at siege of 
Syracuse, 215; of war, 277, 278; 
as affecting correspondence, 337 ; 
drifting, 378 ; fondness for details, 
394. 

Shoeblack, illustration, 335. 

Shyness, English, 245. 

Siamese Twins, allusion, 290. 

Silence, golden, 85. 

Sin, affecting pulpit oratory, 193. 



426 



INDEX. 



Sir, the title, 137. 

Sisters: affection, 63-77 passim; 
jealousy of admiration, 65 ; pecu- 
niary obligations, how regarded, 
69. 

Slander: by rich people, 146, 147; 
in anonymous letters, 370-377. 

Slang, commercial, 365. 

Slovenliness, part of Bohemianism, 
296. 

Smith, an imaginarv gentleman, 
130. 

Smith, Jane, an imaginary charac- 
ter, 178. 

Smoking : affecting friendship, 115 ; 
Bohemian practice, 305. 

Snobbery, among English travel- 
lers, 240-242. 

Sociability: affecting the appetite, 
102; English want of (Essay 
XYIL), 239-252; in amusements, 
383, 384. 

Society: good, in France, 15, 16; 
eccentricity no barrier in London, 
16-18; exclusion, 21, 22; unex- 
pectedly found, 23-26 ; alienation 
from common pursuits, 27, 28 ; 
aid to study, 29-31; restraints 
upon love, 36. 37 ; laws set aside 
by George Eliot, 45, 46, 55 ; Goe- 
the's defiance, 52, 56, 57; rights 
of hospitalitv, illustrated (Essay 
VII.), 99-109; aristocratic, 124; 
affected by rank and wealth (Es- 
say X.), 130-147 passim ; and by 
religion (Essay XII.), 161-17*4 
passim ; ruled by women, 176 ; 
tvrannv, 181; clerical leisure, 
1*96, 19*7; inimical to Littre, 210; 
absent air in, 237: affected by 
Uentility (Essay XVIII.), 253- 
263; secession of thinkers, 262, 
2G3; intellectual, 303; usages, 
304; outside of, 307. 

Socrates, allusion, 204. 

Solicitors, their industry, 196. 

Solitude : social, 19 ; dread, 21 ; 
pleasant reliefs, 22-26; serious 
evil, 27; sometimes demoralizing, 
28; affecting study, 29; mitiga- 
tions, 29-31; preferred, 31; for- 
gotten in labor, 31, 32 ; picture of, 
43; Shelley's fondness, 47; free 
space necessary, 77; dislike 
prompting to hospitality (q. v.), 
143. 



Sons : separated from fathers by in- 
compatibility, 10; escape from 
paternal brutality, 76; Fathers 
and (Essay VI.), 78-98; change 
of circumstances, 78; former obe- 
dience, 79; orders out of fashion, 
80; outside education, 81; educa- 
tion by the father, 82-85 ; rapidity 
of youth, 86, 87 ; lack of paternal 
resemblance, 88 ; differing tastes, 
89; fathers outgrown, 90; chan- 
ges in culture, 91; reservations, 
92; differing opinions, 93; old- 
time divisions, 94; an imperial 
son, 95 ; other painful instances, 
96 ; wounded by satire, 97 ; right 
basis of sonship, 98. (See Fam- 
ily, Fathers, etc.) 

Sorbonne, the, professorship of Eng- 
lish, 152. 

Southey, Robert, Life of Nelson, 
327. 

Spain: religious freedom, 164 ; her- 
etics burned, 180. 

Speculation, compared with experi- 
ence, 30. 

Speech, silvern, 85. 

Spelling, inaccurate, 360. (See 
Languages, etc.) 

Spencer, Herbert : made the cover 
for an assault upon a guest's opin- 
ions, 106 : on display of wealth, 
145; confidence in nature's laws, 
227. 

Spenser, Edmund, his poetic stanza, 
384. 

Sports: often comparatively unre- 
strained, 36 ; affecting fraternity, 
64 : youth fitted for, 86 ; rough- 
ening influence, 100 ; affecting 
friendship, 115; aristocratic, 124; 
among the rich, 143 ; ignorance 
about English, 267, 268 ; concom- 
itant of wealth, 297 ; not enjoyed, 
302 : William of Orange's, 345 ; 
connection with amusement, 385- 
401 passim. 

Springtime of love, 34. 

Stanford's London Atlas, 274. 

Stars, illustration of crowds, 77. 

Steam, no help to friendship, 337. 

Stein, Baroness von, relations to 
Goethe, 51-53. 

Stephenson, George, his locomotive 
not a failure, 293. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, her works 



INDEX. 



427 



confounded with George Eliot's, 
290. 

Strangers, treatment of by the Eng- 
lish and others (Essay XVII.), 
239-252 passim. 

Stream, illustration from the impos- 
sibility of upward flow, 98. 

Strength, accompanied with exer- 
cise, 302. 

Studies : affecting friendship, 111 ; 
literary and artistic, 400, 401. 

Subjugation, the motive of display 
of wealth, 145. 

Suez Canal, and superstition, xii. 

Sunbeam, vacht, 138, 139. 

Sunday : French incident, 128, 129; 
allusion, 198; supposed law, 281. 
(See Sabbath.) 

Sunset, allusion, 31. 

Supernaturalism (Essay XV.), 215- 
231 jxissim; doubts" about, 377, 
378. 

Superstition and religion (Essay 
XV.), 215-231 passim. 

Surgeon, an artistic, 289. 

Sweden, king of, 308. 

Swedenborgianism, commended to 
the author, 378. 

Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's box, 
261. 

Swimming: affected by railways, 
14; in France, 272. 

Switzerland: epithets applied to, 
235; tourists, 240; Alps, 271; 
Goldsmith's travels, 309; Dora's 
travels, 345. 

Sympathy : with an author, 9 ; one 
of two great powers deciding 
human intercourse, 11 ; of a mar- 
ried man with a single, 25, 26; 
between parents and children 
(Essay VI.), 78-98 passim; be- 
tween Priests and Women (Essay 
XIII. part i.), 175-186 passim. 

Svmposium, antique, allusion, 29. 

Syracuse, siege, 215-217, 229. 

Table: its pleasures comparatively 
unrestrained, 36; former tyranny 
of hospitality, 101, 102 ; modern 
customs, appetite affected by so- 
ciability, 102; excess not required 
by hospitality, 103; French fash- 
ion, 105; instances of bad man- 
ners, 106, 107, 126-128; rules of 
precedence, 130, 131; matrons 



occupied with cares, 140, 141; 
among the rich, 143; tyranny, 
172 ; English manners towards 
strangers contrasted with those 
of other nations (Essay XVII.), 
239-252; dejeuner, 273; among 
the rich, 297; talk about hunting, 
398, 399. 

Talking, contrasted with writing, 
354-357. 

Tasso, Bernardo, father of the poet, 
his letters, 350, 351. 

Tavlor, Mrs., relations to Mill, 53- 
55. 

Telegraphv: under fixed law, 228; 
affecting letters, 324, 325, 331, 
361 ; anecdote, 326. 

Telephone, illustration, 336. 

Temper, destroys friendship, 112, 
118. 

Temperance, sometimes at war with 
hospitality, 102-104. 

Tenderness," in letters, 320, 322. 

Tennyson : study of past literature, 
13; line about brotherhood, 67; 
religious sentiment of In Memo- 
riam, 198 ; loyalty to verse, 289 ; 
Palace of Art," 386, 400. 

Thackeray, William Makepeace: 
Rev. Charles Honeyman in The 
Newcomes, 203 ; Book of Snobs, 
242 

Thames River, 270, 335. 

Theatre: avoidance, 123; English 
travellers like actors, 242; gifts 
of a painter, 341. 

Theleme, Abbaye de, its motto, 165. 

Thierry, Augustin, History of Nor- 
man Conquest, 251, 252. 

Thiers, Louis Adolphe, friendship 
with Mignet, 120, 121. 

Time, forgotten in labor, 31, 32. 

Timidity, taking refuge in corre- 
spondence, 356, 357. 

Titles: table precedence, 130; esti- 
mate in England and on the Con- 
tinent, 136, 137 ; British regard, 
241, 242, 248-252 passim; French 
disregard, 248. 

Tolerance : induced by hospitality, 
99; of amusements, 389. 

Towneley Hall, library, 318. 

Trade : English and "social exclu- 
sion, 19 ; foolish distinctions, 132- 
135 ; connection with national 
peace, 150; adaptation of Greek 



423 



INDEX. 



language, 158; interference of re- 
ligion, 171, 174; ignorance about 
English, 265, 266, 268: Lanca- 
shire, 288; careless tradesmen, 
360, 361 ; slang, 365. 

Translations: disliked, 154; of 
Haraerton into French, 267. 

Transubstantiation : private opinion 
and outward form, 169 ; poetic, 
190. (See Roman Catholicism, 
etc.) 

Trappist, freedom of an earnest, 
164, 165. 

Travel: railway illustration, 13-15; 
marriage simile, 44; affecting 
fraternity, 64; affecting friend- 
ship, 111; facilitated, 160: in 
Arabia, 226; unsociability (Essay 
XVII.), 239-252; in vans, 261, 
262; confusion of places, 291; dis- 
pensing with luxury, 300; an un- 
travelled man 301 ; not cared for, 
302 ; cheap conveyances, 304 ; 
books of. 305 : Goldsmith's, 309. 

Trees, and Radicals, 282, 283. 

Trinity, denial of, 257. 

Truth* violations (Essav XVI.), 
232-238. 

Tudor Family: Mary's reign, 164; 
criminalitv, 168; Marv's persecu- 
tion, 180. " 

Turkey, war with Russia, 278. 

Turner. Joseph Mallord William, 
aided by Claude, 13. 

Type-writers, effect on correspond- 
ence, 333. 

Tyranny: of religion (Essay XII.), 
161-174 ; meanest form, 172, 174 ; 
of majorities, 398. 

Ulysses : literary simile, 29 ; Bow 
of, 392. 

Understatement. (See Untruth.) 

Union of languages and peoples, 
148^150. 

Unitarianism : no European sover- 
eign dare profess, 167, 168; diffi- 
culty with creeds, 172; ignorance 
about, 257. 

United States, advantage of having 
the same language as England, 
150. 

Universe, univers, 273-275. 

Universities: degrees, 91; French 
and English, 275, 276; Radical 
members, 284. 



Untruth: an Unrecogr ized Form 
ot (Essay XVI.), 232-238 ; two 
method s^in painting, 232 ; exag- 
geration and diminution, 233: 
self-misrepresentation, 234; over- 
statement and understatement il- 
lustrated in travelling epithets, 
235; dead mediocrity in conver- 
sation, 236; inadequacy, 237; il- 
lustration, 238. 

Vanity: national (Essay XIX.), 
264-279 passim ; taking offence, 
279; absence, 301. 

Vice: of classes, 124, 125: devilish, 
195; part of Bohemianism, 295, 
296 ; of best society, 297. 

Victoria, Queen : quotation from 
her diarv, 186, 187; her oldest 
son, 385.' 

Violin, illustration, 389. 

Viollet-le-Duc, anecdote, 364. 

Virgil, Palmer's constant compan- 
ion, 313. (See Latin.) 

Virgin Mary, her influence, 176. 
(See Eugenie, etc.) 

Virtue: of classes, 124, 125: priest- 
ly adherence, 195; definition, 208 ; 
Button's and Littre's, 211. 

Visiting, with rich and poor, 139- 
144. 

Vitriol, in letters, 371. 

Vituperation, priestly, 194. 

Vivisection, feminine dislike, 180. 

Voltaire: quotation about Colum- 
bus, 274; Goldsmith's intervieAv, 
309. 

Vulpius, Christiane, relations to 
Goethe, 52, 53. 

Wagner, Richard, his Tann- 
hauser, 388. 

Wales, Prince of. laborious amuse- 
ments, 385-387. 

Warcopp, Robert, in Plumpton 
letters, 323, 331. 

Wars: affected hy studv of lan- 
guages, 148-150, 151/160; Eu- 
genie's influence, 176 ; divine 
connection, 215-224; caused by 
national ignorance, 277, 278. 

Waterloo, battle, 153. 

Wave, simile, 251. 

Wealth: affecting fraternity, 66 : 
affecting domestic harmony, 77 ; 
destroying friendship, 114, 116; 



INDEX. 



429 



Flux of (Essay IX.), 119-129; 
property variable, influence of 
changes, 119 ; access of bachelors 
and the married to society, 120; 
instances of friendship affected 
by poverty, 121; false friends, 
122; imprudent marriages, 123; 
middle-class instances of content- 
ment, 124 ; aid to refinement, 125 ; 
dress, 126 ; cards, and other 
forms of courtesy, superfluities, 
127; discipline of courtesy, 128; 
rural manners in France, 129 ; 
Differences (Essay X.), 130-147; 
social precedence, 130; land- 
ownership, 131; trade, 132-134; 
nouveau riche and ancestry, 135; 
titles, 136, 137 ; varied en jovments, 
138, 139; hospitality, 140-144; 
English appreciation, 144-146 ; 
undue deference, 146, 147 ; over- 
statement and understatement, 
234; assumption, 242; plutocracy, 
246, 247; American inequalities, 
248; genteel ignorance, 258-260; 
two great advantages, 297, 298; 
small measure, 298; connection 
with Philistinism and Bohemian- 
ism, 299-314; employs better 
agents, 359, 360; connection with 
amusements, 383-401. (See Fov- 
erty, etc.) 

Webb, Captain, lost at Niagara, 290. 

Weeds, illustration of Radicalism, 
282. 

Weimar : Goethe's home, 52, 57; 
Duke of, 57. 

Wenderholme, Hamerton's storv, 
378. 

Wesley, John, choice in religion, 
173. (See Methodism.) 

Westbrook, Harriett, relation to 
Shelley, 46, 47, 97. 

Westminster Abbey, mistaken for 
another building," 291. 

White, Richard Grant, story, 277. 

Whist, selfishness in, 397. 

William,>emperor of Germany, table 
customs, 103. 

Wine: connection with hospitality, 
101-103, 121; traders in con- 
sidered superior, 133; ignorance 
about English use, 268, 269, 270 ; 
port, 273 ; concomitant of wealth, 
297, 298; simile, 367. (See 
Table, etc.) 



Wives: a pitiful confession, 41; 
George Eliot's position, 45, 46; 
relations to noted husbands, 47- 
62 ; dread of a wife's kindred, 
73; unions made by parents, 94- 
98; destroying friendship. 115, 
116; tired, 144; regard of Na- 
poleon ILL, 225; old letters, 322; 
gain from post-cards, 329, 330; 
privacv of letters, 350; Mon- 
taigne's letter, 251, 252. (See 
Marriage, Women, etc.) 

Wolf, priestly, 203. 

Wolselev, Sir Garnet, victorv, 222, 
223, 229. 

Wood, French use of, 272. 

Women : friendship between two, 
viii, ix; absorption in one, 33; 
beauty's attraction, 33, 38, 39; 
passion long preserved, 40; rela- 
tions to certain noted men, 44- 
62 passim ; sisterly jealousy, 65; 
governed by sentiment, 69 ; 
adding to home discomfort, 75, 
76 ; English incivility, 106 ; 
French incivility to English, and 
defence, 106; social acuteness, 
130; Priests and Women (Essav 
XIII.), 175-204; dislike of fixed 
rules, 175 ; persuasive powers, 
ruling society, 176 ; dependence, 
advisers, 177 ; love, 178 ; gentle- 
ness, 179 ; sympathy with per- 
secution, 180; harm of both 
frivolity and seriousness, 181 ; 
injustice of female sex, anxiety 
for sympathy, 182; sensitiveness, 
183;" services desired at special 
times, 184; motherhood, 185 ; 
consolation, 186 ; aesthetic na- 
ture, 187; fondness for show, 
188; dress, 189; churches, 190; 
worship in music, 191; eloquence, 
192 ; eager for the right, 194; 
obstinacy, 195 ; association in 
benevolence, 196; love of cere- 
mony, 197; festivals, 198; con- 
fidence in a clergyman, 199 ; 
marriage formerly disapproved, 
clergy women, 200; relief in con- 
fession, 201, 202; gentlewomen's 
letters, 205, 206 ; French, among 
strangers, 242, 243; want of anal- 
ysis, 280 ; strong theological in- 
terest. 377-380: old maids, 379- 
382 ; gentlewomen. 381, 382 ; 



430 



INDEX. 



not interested in sporting talk, 
399. (See Marriage, Wives, etc.) 

Word, power of a, 118. 

Wordsworth : indebtedness to the 
poor. 22; on Nature's loyalty, 30; 
instance of his uncleanness, 311. 

Work, softens solitude, 31, 32. 

Working-men. (See Lower Classes. ) 

World, possible enjoyment of, 303. 

Worship: word in wedding-service, 
62 ; limited by locality, 171-174 ; 
musical, 191; expressions in let- 
ters, 321. 

Writing, a new discovery supposed, 
336. 

Wrygharue, message by, 320. 



Wvcherley, William, his ribaldrv, 
181. 

Yachting, 258, 259, 292, 358. (See 
Boating.) 

York : Minster, 190 ; archbishop, 
222 ; diocese, 275. 

Yorkshire, letter to, 320. 

Youth : contrasted with age, 87-89 ; 
nonsense reproduced by Shak- 
speare, 89 ; insult, 107 ; in friend- 
ship, 111, 112; acceptance of 
kindness, 117 ; semblance caused 
by ignorance of a language, 151. 

Zeus, a hunter compared to, 391. 



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THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. New Edition, Revised, with 

Notes and an Introduction. "Fortunate is he who at an early age knows what 
«?^is." — Goethe. Square i2nio. Price $2.00. 

"The whole volume is adapted to give a wholesome stimulus to the taste for art> and to 
place it in an intelligent and wise direction. With a knowledge of the principles, which it sets 
forth in a style of peculiar fascination, the reader is prepared to enjoy the wonders of ancient 
and modern art, with a fresh sense of their beauty, and a critical recognition of the sources of 
their power." — New York Tribune. 

A PAINTER'S CAMP. A New Edition, in 1 vol. i6mo. 

Price $1.50. Square 1 2mo. Price $2.00. 

" If any reader whose eye chances to meet this article has read ' The Painter's Camp,' by 
Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, he will need but little stimulus to feel assured that the same 
author's work, entitled 'Thoughts about Art,' is worth his attention. The former, I confess, 
was so unique that no author should be expected to repeat the sensation produced by it. Like 
the 'Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,' or the ' Swiss Family Robinson,' it brought to maturer 
minds, as those do to all, the flavor of breezy out-of-door experiences, — an aroma of poetry 
and adventure combined. It was full of art, and art-discussions too ; and yet it needed no 
rare technical knowledge to understand and enjoy it." — Joel Benton. 

"They ('A Painter's Camp' and ' Thoughts about Art ') are the most useful books that 
could be placed in the hands of the American art public. If we were asked where the most 
intelligent, the most trustworthy, the most practical, and the most interesting exposition of 
modern art and cognate subjects is to be found, we should point to Hamerton's writings." — 
The Atlantic Monthly. 

THE UNKNOWN RIVER: An Etcher's Voyage of Discov- 
ery. With an original Preface for the American Edition, and Thirty-seven Plates 
etched by the Author. One elegant 8vo volume, bound in cloth, extra, gilt, and 
gilt edges. Price $6.00. A cheaper edition, square i2mo. Price $2.00. 

" Wordsworth might like to come back to earth for a summer, and voyage with Philip Gil- 
bert Hamerton down some ' Unknown River' ! If this supposition seem extravagant to any 
man, let him buy and read ' The Unknown River, an Etcher's Voyage of Discovery,' by 
P. G. Hamerton. It is not easy to write soberly about this book while fresh from its presence. 
The subtle charm of the very title is indescribable ; it lays hold in the outset on the deepest 
romance in every heart ; it is the very voyage we are all yearning for. When, later on, we are 
told that this 'Unknown River' is the Arroux, in the eastern highlands of France, that it 
empties into the Loire, and has on its shores ancient towns of historic interest, we do not quite 
believe it. Mr. Hamerton has flung a stronger spell by his first word than he knew." — 
Scrzbner's Monthly. 

CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. With Eight Illustrations by 

J. VEYRASSATand Karl Bodmer. Square i2mo. Price $2.00. 

" This is a choice book. Only such a man as Hamerton" could have written it, who, by virtue 
of his great love of art, has been a quick and keen observer of nature, who has lived with and 
loved animal nature, and made friends and companions of the dog and horse and bird. And 
of such, how few there are ! Mr. Hamerton has observed to much purpose, for he has a curiou? 
sympathy with the ' painful mystery of brute creation,' as Dr. Arnold called it.^ He recognizes 
the beauty and the burden of that life which is bounded by so fine and sensitive a mortality. 
He finds in the uses of the domestic animal something supplementary to his own manhood, 
and which develops both the head and heart of the good master. We have been often reminded 
of Montaigne in reading this book, as we always associate him with his cat. " — Boston Couritr. 



MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS. 



THE LIFE OF J. M. W. TURNER, R. A. Square i2mo. 

Price $2.00. 

" We have found his volume thoioughly fascinating, and think that no open-minded reader 
of the ' Modern Painters ' should neglect to read this ' Life-' In it he will find Turner 
dethroned from the pinnacle of a demi-god on which Ruskin has set him (greatly to the 
artist's disadvantage), but he will also find him placed on another reasonably high pedestal 
where one may admire him intelligently and lovingly, in spite of the defects in drawing, the 
occasional lapses of coloring and the other peculiarities, which are made clear to his observa- 
tion by Mr. Hamerton's discussion." — Boston Courier. 

ETCHING AND ETCHERS. Illustrated with Etchings 

printed in Paris under the supervision of Mr. Hamerton. A new, revised, and 
enlarged Edition. 8vo. Cloth, gilt and black. Price $5.00. 

" We are not in the habit of overpraising publishers or authors, but we have no hesitation 
in saying that Mr. Hamerton's ' Etching and Etchers ' will henceforth deserve to have, and 
certainly obtain, a place in every gentleman's library in the country who can afford to buy the 
book. The subject is treated so conscientiously, there is such a maturity and repose of thought 
and exposition, and in every page, whether you agree or disagree, so much to think over with 
luxurious reflection, besides which the illustrations are so valuable and delicately chosen for 
the object in view, that the book rather resembles the mediaeval labors of life-long devotion, 
than a nineteenth-century forty-steam-power of ephemeral production." — The Spectator. 

THE GRAPHIC ARTS: A Treatise on the Varieties of 

Drawing, Painting, and Engraving in Comparison with each other and with Nature. 

Square i2mo. Price $2.00. 

" Few books have issued from the American press of more deserved and general interest 
and value. The volume displays a vast amount of artistic knowledge and research, and a 
thorough familiarity with all the literature of the subject, and with general literature as well, 
besides showing his own conspicuous and graceful literary accomplishment. It is a volume 
most to be welcomed, however, for its probable effect in widening the respect for graphic art 
in its various forms through making men and women of some literary culture better acquainted 
with its reason and method as well as its beauty." — Chicago Times. 

ROUND MY HOUSE. Notes of Rural Life in France in 

Peace and War. Square i2mo. Price $2.00. 

" Whatever the subject he chooses, and he is at home with a good many, Mr. Hamerton is 
pretty sure to write an entertaining book, and this one, which gives an account of his life in 
France, is no exception. He takes the reader into his confidence, and tells him just how hard 
it was to find exactly the sort of house he wanted. . . . After describing this tempting place, 
the author goes on to give his readers just that full record of what he saw in his daily life, 
which is most interesting and useful to an outsider. The merit of this part is, that it so exactly 
resembles the talk of a sensible man whose tact enables him to know just what his hearers 
would like to hear." — Atlantic Monthly. 

WENDERHOLME: a Tale of Yorkshire and Lancashire. 

Square 1 2mo. Price $2.00. 

"To those who are familiar with other works by Mr. Hamerton, it may be sufficient, in a 
general way, to say that ' Wenderholme' is characterized by the same thoroughness, the same 
simplicity, the same artistic flavor that make ' Round my House ' so delightful ; by the same 
love of nature, the same appreciation of the beautiful, the same refinement that mark ' The 
Unknown River' and 'A Painter's Camp; ' and there are not wanting evidences of the wide 
reading, the proofs of culture and earnestness that are conspicuous in ' Intellectual Life.' " — 
Cincinnati, O., Times. 



MR, HAMERTON'S WORKS. 



MODERN FRENCHMEN. Five Biographies : Victor Jacque- 

niont, Traveller and Naturalist ; Henri Perrevve, Ecclesiastic and Orator ; Francois 
Rude, Sculptor ; Jean Jacques Ampere, Historian, Archaeologist, and Traveller ; 
Henri Regnault, Painter and Patriot. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Uni- 
form with " The Intellectual Life," &c. Square i2mo. Price $2.00. 

" Philip Gilbert Hamerton has the faculty (not common to all authors) of making every- 
thing he touches interesting. Best known as a writer on art, his works upon that subject have 
come to be recognized as standards. His novels and essays are always full of meat, and his 
works generally are characterized by a fairness and impartiality which give them peculiar 
value. His latest work, 'Modern Frenchmen,' is made up of five biographies." — Boston 
Transcript. 

HUMAN INTERCOURSE. Square i 2 mo. Price $2.00. 

" He has the art of presenting to our minds a hundred paths into which every subject opens. 
... In writing about ' Human Intercourse,' Mr. Hamerton has the always significant facts of 
human nature to deal with, — those eternally interesting creatures, men and women. . . . 
Occasionally, too, there are sentences that suggest by their felicity the rhythm of poetry. Better 
than all, in this, as in every one of Mr. Hamerton's works, we feel that we are dealing with 
a man who, besides his grace, his wit, or his keen observation, is always on the side of simple 
truth and purity of living, nnd possesses a high-minded faith in the power of the Best, and a 
determination to aid in its final victory." — Philadelphia Press. 

LANDSCAPE. Square 1 2mo. Price $2.00. 

" Mr. Hamerton in sending to his publishers, Messrs. Roberts Brothers, a complete set of 
proofs for the library edition, says; ' I have done all in my power to make " Landscape" a 
readable book. It is not mere letter-press to illustrations, or anything of the kind, but a book 
which, I hope, anybody who takes any interest in landscape would be glad to possess.' . . . 
The subject is treated from all sides which have any contact with art or sentiment, — from the 
side of our illusions ; our love for nature ; the power of nature over us ; nature as subjective ; 
verbal description, 'word-painting;' nature as reflected by Homer, as the type of Greek 
nature-impression ; by Virgil or Latin, Ariosto or Mediaeval ; then as studied by Wordsworth 
and Lamartine, as types of English and French ; from its relation to the various graphic arts, 
its characteristics in Great Britain and in France, and from the geography of beauty and art. 
Mountains are weighed in the art balances ; lakes, brooks, rivulets, and rivers in their degrees 
of magnitude. Then man's work on rivers and their use in art are considered ; then trees, 
under their various aspects ; then the effect of agriculture on landscape, of figures and animals, 
and of architecture. 'The two immensities,' sea and sky, conclude." — The Nation. 



Mr. Hamerton's Works (not including u Etchers and Etching," 
"Imagination in Landscape Painting," "Paris," and "A Summer 
Voyage on the Saone ") may be had in uniform binding. 14 vols. 
Square i2mo. Cloth, price $28.00; half calf, price $5600. A 
cheaper edition, 12 vols., i6mo, cloth, Oxford style, $17.50; cloth, 
gilt, $21.00. 

For sale by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of adver- 
tised price, by 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 

Boston. 



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